A 58 year old man from the Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan was recently arrested by Japanese authorities, after it was discovered that he was selling modified Nintento Switch consoles capable of running pirated games. The modifications involved soldering additional hardware onto the console’s board and then pre-loading pirated games onto it.
The man allegedly resold these modified Nintendo Switch consoles for 28,000 Yen (~RM808) and at the time of his arrest, Japanese police said that he had four modified units in his possession. It’s possible the man wasn’t remorseful as he later said while in questioning “I was interested to know if people thought I was great at selling these modified machines”.
The man’s arrest is an irony for Nintendo, given that the gaming world’s most litigious company’s chief patent attorney recently admitted that emulation and emulators are technically legal. However, the distribution of copyrighted software through these emulators were not.
Saying that the last year was rough for Nintendo Switchy emulation efforts would be underselling the narrative. In March 2024, Nintendo took the emulator group, Tropic Haze, and its software Yuzu, to court. The court case was effectively a beatdown; Nintendo won the lawsuit virtually by default when Tropic Haze threw in the towel and then agreed to not only pay the company US$2.4 million (~RM10.8 million), but also surrender all its domains and information related to its emulator.
Getting back on point, the Japanese man’s arrest falls in line with the upcoming release of the Nintendo’s Switch 2. The console’s first look trailer was released just days ago, with an in-depth look at it set to happen later this April.
(Source: NTV, Techspot, Android Authority)
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