Gamertell

The game pirates of Mexico (and we don’t mean Johnny Depp’s next flick) are going through especially turbulent times. After a rain on a dozen sellers, Mexican officials seized 15,000 counterfiet Nintendo products from a notorious contraband market in Guadalajara. Out of the counterfeits that the officials seized, approximately 4500 were pirated Wii games.

This is not the first instance of counterfeit Nintendo products being seized in Mexico - Guadalajara in particular. In an earlier raid on this game pirate haven, approximately 56,000 pirated Nintendo products were apprehended from 23 shops. Last month (July 2007) a shipment of Nintendo product imitations from China was stopped in its tracks.

Nintendo has been working closely with Mexican authorities in a drive to stop the piracy of its products. Nintendo estimated its loss due to piracy last year to be $762 million - of course, even its developers and third-party publishers shared this loss. Nintendo claims to have confiscated 100,000 fake Wii games in 2007 alone.

Videogame piracy is a huge problem in not only Latin America but many parts of the world. The exorbitant prices of game consoles and software is amongst the biggest causes of piracy, making it second nature for many people. Take for instance the fact that a pirated copy of a game sells for $1 to $5 in several markets in South and South East Asia, while an authentic copy retails for $30 to 60. Those dirt cheap prices are low enough to entice even those who can easily afford full price, retail copies of games.

There is a two-pronged solution to the problem of piracy. The game companies need to find ways to lower prices and then take the appropriate legal course to fight piracy, only then can piracy be completely removed. Otherwise, it is unrealistic to expect piracy to disappear through legal action alone since game pirates will resurface again and again, as long as there are gamers willing to save a few bucks on pirated stuff.

Read [Gamespot]