Nintendo blames DS piracy for sharp European sales decline

From April to December 2009, Nintendo has seen a 45 per cent drop in DS software sales in Europe. It's a significantly steeper dip than the United States or Japan, which saw declines of 11 per cent and seven per cent respectively.

But it's not just a case of Europeans growing tired of Nintendo's recent software output. The Japanese gaming giant puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of naughty software pirates who use cartridges like the R4 to get games, illegally, for free.

"In June 2009", Japanese website Asahi reports, "Nintendo monitored ten websites based overseas that allowed people to illicitly download game software, and found that software had been pirated a total 238 million times."

Multiplied by the average retail price for a DS game, and that's a trillion yen ($10 billion or £7 billion) in potentially lost sales.

Nintendo's study also picked out the three most mischievous European countries, and found that Italy leads the continent in the number of illegal downloads, followed by Spain and France.

Nintendo isn't sitting on its hands, though. Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, said at the company's financial results announcement this January that he hoped to "enhance the ability to combat piracy in Europe through both legal and technological means."