Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun is reporting that video game maker Nintendo is losing trillions of yen due to new kinds of pirating. Nintendo says they have had a nearly 50% drop in European DS games sales in recent months.
Kotaku reports the Japanese game maker has recently been cracking down on sellers of R4 cartridges and similar devices. Nintendo believes the devices allow users to go around existing anti-piracy protections inside the DS.
Nintendo conducted an investigation in June 2009 which monitored 10 websites that supposedly allow downloads of pirated software. Nintendo claims their software had been pirated 238 million times. Considering the average cost of games software, it is estimated the company may have lost up to 1 trillion yen ($10.7 billion).
Nintendo frequently updates anti-piracy measures on their consoles via internet updates, however pirates can avoid these by simply not connecting to the internet. Italy, Spain and France are believed to have the largest amount of illegal games downloads in Europe.