Topic: Nintendo: no longer in Brazil!!!!

[pimple]

http://www.estadao.com.br/tecnologia/informatica/2003/fev/27/30.htm

This is BIG news, guys!!!
In a nut shell, official Nintendo products will no longer be manufactured to our Brazilian brothers

Gradiente Eletronica, the company that has the rights to manufacture and sell licensed Nintendo games and products, says that the reason they're quitting the business are the high piracy rates, high exchange rates, and low sales characters.

At the end of the article, though, they mention that they will still offer technical support to products (GCN's, GBA's, SNES, GBC, etc) already on the market, and they will also continue to sell parts and accessories (controllers, memory cards, and such).

Please don't delete this post! I tried to email it to Billy, but something is wrong with my email, so outgoing messages end up going nowhere.

Thanks!

[ThePerm]

piracy in brazill? Piracy anywhere?

[pimple]

i hear brazil is worse than asia as a whole (piracy-wise).

[willys85]

That's weird, i thought that brazil has less piracy of nintendo products thanparaguay

[Sean]

I don't have facts, and I know this is very argumentative, and by all means correct me, but I don't believe for one second that Brazil has worse piracy than Asia.  Piracy is so rampant in Hong Kong, for instance, that it either has sunk or is sinking their entire movie industry.  As for games, I'd say it's about the same.

Still, the piracy must be bad, and that's the entire point--it doesn't matter if it is worse or not--it's apparently bad enough that this distributor can't handle it.  That's pretty sad.  I was in Brail (as they spell it) a few years ago, and had a few conversations about games with some natives there.  Of course we talked about the Black Market and I did find that the systems were quite expensive there, but mostly because the economy is so bad there--people just don't have the cash to buy things, especially when their system of choice costs more, proportionally, in reals than in $US.

I will say I could of course be wrong about the piracy there, but it seems far-fetched.  More likely, the piracy was just too much for the distributor, as I said, no matter whose country's is worse.

Sample conversation that just came to me based on the fact that I might've just started an argument that I'll lose but was really just yapping:

Brazilian: "Our piracy is so bad, our games economy collapsed!"
Asian: "Really?  I didn't know it was that bad.  Ours is the WORST."
B: "Doesn't compare to ours."
A: "Shoot, fool, we've got the worst piracy ever!  Our economy has gone bust!"
B: [expletive]
A: [expletive]
[fisticuffs]
End.  

[kennyb27]

Personally, I don't see why this is a) a big surprise or b) wrong on Nintendo's part.  Let's think about this from a business standpoint.  Every year to piracy, Nintendo is probably losing millions of dollars, and it is well-known that a large portion of this piracy is based in Central America.  Therefore, what is the smart business answer?  It seems extremely obvious to me.  Also, for us to be upset over this decision by Nintendo seems wrong in itself.  We post hundreds of threads about how Nintendo is losing ground to Microsoft and and falling even farther behind Sony.  Well, let us think of the math behind it, if we do not want to see Nintendo lose any more profit, we should want to see Nintendo collapse the game market (namely, Brazil, in this case) where they lose a large portion of their money.  Very simple, no? This move, to me, seems smart all the way around by Nintendo.  The only losing side appears to be the truthful people in Brazil who actually bought official Nintendo copies of the games.   And from my perspective, due to the poverty rate and the rate of piracy, there was very few "true" Nintendo gamers in Brazil.  Any thoughts contrary to mine?

[JSR]

I feel sorry for Nintendo fans in Brazil. I’m actually very surprised that piracy is so high in Brazil. At least Gradiente Eletronica is still supporting the Nintendo systems already sold.

[ThePerm]

well if osmeone created a very expensive pirate mahcien they may be able to make their money by pirating masses of sotware.

[godwheel]

I thought the GCN MINI-DVDs could not be pirated? IF so this only affects GBAs at the most?

[ThePerm]

anythign can be pirated...it is totally possible to pirate gcn games, however extreemly expensive. The average consumer with a burner probably couldnt do it. But a crime syndicate would have enough recources to pull it off. It is economically imfeasable for the average joe to do it. What a crime syndicate coudl do is build a burner specifically designed to copy and burn gcn games. They can then conterfiet the boxes and distribute them to consumers makign the money. That special burner would have to be expnsive and they would have to have geniouses with hardwatre and engineering workign on the burners.

[substrate]

Getting something to burn the discs isn't the only problem. Another, most likely larger, problem is you would have manufacture the mini-dvds.

[alvinaloy]

That's strange. I'm from Asia and there is ABSOLUTELY no pirated products for the Gamecube AT ALL!!! Yeah there're those for PS2, Xbox and PCs going at $2-$8 dollars (about USD$0.80-$5) but nothing for the GC. I ain't complaining cos I do have the purchasing power to import my games from the US, or buy from local shops who import US versions.

I believe it's not lucrative for these pirates (mostly from China) to specially create N's mini discs. CDs are more universally used and hence more money in piracy for it.

[pimple]

well, i don't think they were very many gcn games being pirated. the system there costs 'only' R$8,000.00 (reals), which is about $400.00 USD. not too bad if you look at the xbox and ps2, both selling at R$1,500.00 (almost $800.00 USD).
nintendo still (or at least they used to) sells tons of gameboy color, snes, and mostly, N64 products in brazil. so i believe most of the piracy went around those systems. of course, i'm sure the gba got involved, but the gcn was probably not.

ah, my wrist popped out of place today (b-boying), so i can't type any more...

[RolodeX]

You guys are completely wrong. First of all, I'm from Brazil.
Nintendo is not quitting distribution down here in the jungle. They simply left this job to its third parties. Electronic Arts, Capcom, Ubi Soft, etc are taking care of the distribution of their games, and Nintendo games are sold on Blockbusters all over the country (truly expensive price, but anyway...). About piracy, you will never find a pirated gamecube game here. even the nintendo 64 wasn't affected by piracy here. the piracy problem in brazil only involves Super Nintendo and GameBoy games (gameboy, not GAMEBOY ADVANCE). And about costs: nintendo gamecube is currently costing R$699 (which is about U$225), a theorically honest price, the games that are incompatible to Brazil's "poverty rate". people normally own 1-3 games.

[nonjagged]

Im confused is this distributor no longer stocking Gamecube games because piracy is so big (Yup I was aware of this) that gamers normally would buy a ps2 and $2 pirate games instead of Gamecube with full retail price games ...or
Has the Gamecube software been cracked? and Gamecube games are being sold illegally for $2 there?

Can some one elaborate on the issue?

Now we have $ony releasing a new Psx2 which plays/can read DVD-R and DVD-RW lol is there no end to $ony's intention to destroy Nintendo?




Um OK I just read the previous post which helped out somewhat. I see that it pays to read every post in a thread.

[Termin8Anakin]

Is it that Sony and Microsoft are actually encouraging piracy or what?
I seriously hate the way the average joe and the big pirate thinks.
I mean, it's like:
"NIntendo's stuff isn't piratable. They suck. Let's go with Sony and Microsoft."
And people don't buy Nintendo cause you can't pirate them! it's bloody crazy!
I mean, they're doing nothing but GOOD things for the financial security of the industry, and they are the ones getting shunned! Do they have to actually ALLOW this crap to go on just to get a decent buck?

[Nintendork SP]

If piracy is a major problem there, then they don't deserve Nintendo's real products.  They can screw off!