You might be wondering who John Hillier is and what he’s talking about. He is the manager of the Intellectual Property Crime unit of the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association. I’m not really sure what that means either, but apparently he’s very concerned with crime in regards to video games. Specifically, piracy of handheld games.

According to Hillier, DS games are not selling as well in the United States as they are in other countries, and he believes that this is because of the R4 chip that allows users to play illegally downloaded DS games. Instead of doing any actual research, he opted for wild speculation:

“In America it's thought 90 percent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s.”



Ninety percent? Seriously? Have that many people even heard of the R4, let alone figured out how to install and run it? I sincerely doubt it. I’m no scientist, but I did do a quick survey of DS owners in my house, with these findings: 100% of us own DS systems, and 0% have used the R4 chip. This conclusive study of myself and two roommates should be all you need to draw your own deductions.

SOURCE

UPDATE: Since this story ran, GamePolitics has run a second story stating that, apparently, no one from the ELSPA actually said that.

"[IP security head John Hillier] didn’t quote The Sunday Post on any figures whatsoever. ELSPA (which represents U.K. game publishers) would certainly never presume to comment about America or anywhere else outside of the UK.

The quotes from The Sunday Post were ascribed to his name from another article which originates from a website in Singapore. This, it appears, is where The Sunday Post first found out about the supposed R4 situation and for some reason unknown to John have quoted him on what this article said.

As far as Nintendo are concerned, the facts are completely spurious."

Personally, I have no reason not to believe that, because the 90% statement was obviously garbage. No one even remotely related to the video game industry could think such a figure is true.