Thieves must cost Nintendo billions a year, stealing games that should have been paid for. Mostly using the R4 device. It appears that at long last Nintendo have got their act together and done something about it.

For a start the R4 is now illegal in Japan. Amazon and eBay have banned them from sale on their sites. And since January last year Nintendo have been involved in more than 560 actions that have led to the seizure of 411,000 of these devices. But this is too little, too late. Already many millions of people worldwide are using R4s to play games they have stolen.

More promising is MetaFortress technology from Metaforic which is going into use with seven publishers this year. Whilst everything is ultimately crackable, this protection makes it very difficult because each game title is protected in a unique way. It will provide a considerable obstacle to the thieves.

But ultimately the only real solution is to stop the thieves stealing games over the internet.