It seems Nintendo is not satisfied with the amount of money that the casual market is slipping into their garters. In an unprecedented and frankly offensive move, they have added a sort of “DRM” to prevent Wii users from re-selling or even sharing their newest peripheral: the WiiSpeak.

How do you prevent someone from sharing a piece of hardware, you might ask? Why, by giving you a single use code in the instruction pamphlet! MTV Multiplayer blog caught this when they broke the WiiSpeak out of its packaging:

There is a pamphlet packaged with the peripheral that includes a 16-character code, a “Wii Download Ticket Number,” to be used for downloading the Wii Speak Channel. According to the pamphlet, this code “cannot be replaced by Nintendo or your retailer if it is lost or stolen.”

This means you can only use the WiiSpeak peripheral if you have the “software”–so you have to buy it new. There is no possible way to buy this product used, so you will most likely not be able to trade it in as well. Also, this means that you can’t take the device to a friend’s house to share the fun. You’ll have to drag along your entire system to use one piece of hardware.

Many games such as Rock Band and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts are taking steps in the right direction by offering bonuses for customers who pre-order and buy the game new. However, it seems Nintendo is taking a step backward by taking something away from customers–part of their ownership of the hardware.

I want to say I understand why Nintendo is doing this, but I just don’t. They make so much money off of system and game sales that they are in no dire need to make more. This is another step towards the disturbing trend of publishers not allowing their customers to fully own something that they have rightfully paid for. Who is hurt more by piracy these days: the multi-million dollar corporation or the average game consumer? Doesn’t seem like such a hard answer to figure out.

Tags: peripheral, used sales, WiiSpeak

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1 Comment » madpuppy on November 16, 2008 12:08 am the Big “N” are a bunch of greedy bastards and they consider their user base as a bunch of tools. I have a Wii here at my house, I don’t own it, it is my brothers. I allmost bought one, it seemed like a fun little gaming machine, but, after playing with my brothers and seeing how the big “N” tries to milk it’s customers, they can go to hell. oh yeah! and on top of that the games look like blurry crap and the controller is like the steering on a 1972 for econoline super van with 300k miles on it. RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.