Customs warns of killer consoles

But..

..the consoles actually *work*?

Are they

truely fakes or are they like Levi jeans et al, the full product but destined for the far eastern market ?

Or how about...?

The iQue DS is the Chinese made, non-counterfiet and fully compatible version. Can be found on eBay for less than the "real" Western model.

Power supply.

It seems the power supply hasn't been tested by Ninetendo. So there's no evidence to suggest it is dangerous. There's just no record of any testing having been done.

I'm not saying we should buy counter-fits but trying to say they'll cause fires when there's no evidence just makes them look silly and make people less likely to believe anything else they say.

Factory next door...

What's the betting they came out the factory next door? That had borrowed all the schematics etc. and was knocking them out without big N knowing? Bit like they do with Nike trainers etc. exactly the same, just not sanctioned.

HMRC

Like all government depratments, police departments and trade bodies, they seem to be smoking crack when they do their math.

Yes this hall was worth 50 billion pounds! Really, it was.

I mean why do reporters even report such blatent bulls--t?

iQue DS is better

That Chinese DS compatible can play multi-region games, it's not only cheaper it's better. As to the power supply, the Chinese know how to make power supplies it's just the two flat pin plug version with an adaptor I guess ? The one that's used by billions of Chinese without massive deaths?!

Seriously UK plugs are HUGE, way over-engineered, the UK plug for an iPod is bigger than the iPod! Somehow the rest of the world manages to get by with far smaller, simpler plugs without a noticeable difference in electrocution rates!

It also looks a lot better:

http://www.pcpop.com/doc/0/267/267668.shtml

I assume the complaint is the trademark infringements (use of DS and two sequares logo). However Customs seems to know that's not convincing and tries to make out it's a safety issue.

I reckon Customs should not be enforcing civil trademark rights of Nintendo at the expense of UK consumers. It's for Nintendo to sue the importers. If they lose then UK people would have been unjustly punished for buying the iQue.

If UK customers are importing it themselves, then what real claim is there for Customs to prevent it's import?? Can they show a legal action to declare the trademark infringing, or do they just flip a coin and decide what to allow in or not?

Or have we forgotten that Compaq is a clone of IBM? What if Customs decided that Compaq would be snuffed out at birth for cloning the IBM PC??

wasn't there a boy killed a few months ago

By a faulty DS adapter his parents had brought when he was on holiday in thailand?

These of course are probably perfectly safe and the consoles themselves will be if you supply your own UK adapter.

@people

You can't sell something in the UK (or Europe) without a CE certificate to prove it is safe, by definition without that certificate it is unsafe, or rather not proven to be safe and therefore shouldn't be sold. It's all very well saying that the people making the power supply probably know how to make a power supply, but that's little comfort when your house has burned down and your kids are dead.

Whoever said that the UK has comprable electrocution rates to the rest of the world is talking out of his nether regions. I have used US plugs and know may others who have and got shocks on a fairly regular occasion. The UK plug, while large, is known around the world for its safety, particularly at high current.

As for whoever suggested that illigal import of a discounted console isn't a problem because the people won't have purchased one at full price, therefore there is no loss to Nintendo. I really don't know what to say, other than it doesn't matter if they weren't going to shell out the full price, it's still not right to do it.

UK Adapters Readily Available

As the only issue seems to be with the power supply, I can recommend buying a replacement one on fleabay. That's what we did when we lost our's - which was a French one in any case - and it has worked flawlessly ever since. Think it cost about a fiver. The price of an imported iQue DS Lite plus a fiver for the replacement power supply < a UK spec DS from Argos (by a considerable margin).

if you try to sell something that seems to good to be true, then make it seem less good!

* “when a bargain seems too good to be true it actually is”

* Fakes “retailed for around £40 rather than the usual price of £100 “

If I were a faker then I would sell for £90 to give the appearance of authenticity – many more punters and MUCH more profit !!!!!

@ Neil Morgan

Is reverse engineering a chip really needed to display “DS” on startup? How difficult is it to program a crappy little processor to do the same?

@Pie

I think it emerged that he had unplugged it while still wet from swimming, or something similar. Of course by the time that came to be common knowledge nobody cared anymore and it had already been blamed on a dodgy foreign power unit.

iQue

Is a Nintendo company and trade name. These aren't fake Nintendo products, these are Nintendo products meant for another market.

Foreign DS's

I got my DS-Lite while passing through Singapore a few years back.

PSU was usless as it had the wrong plug on it, so I have been charging it via USB for years.

I agree, Customs and Excise should not be playing Trade Police.

Power sources -- that's the challenge!

Wait, let me get this straight. So these guys are able to counterfeit all the components required to build the console, but they've been utterly unable to figure out how to build the damned power source. Which, in completely unrelated news, is the one single piece of equipment in the entire kit which could possibly pose any sort of threat to the user. FUD, anyone?

@ Neil Morgan

"if you turn it on and it says DS then it is the real thing,"

I found a program called a emulator on the internet, i turned it on and it said ds, does that mean that my pc is a real ds now?

Re: region locks

Errr, Nintendo DS and DS Lite are NOT region locked! You can play any game on them from any territory. If you couldn't how can I be playing my Canadian bought games on a UK console?!

The next iteration of the DS will likely have region locking in place because they want to do movies or music or something of the sort (story was on the Reg I think).

Not sure how well a UK DS would cope with the Chinese character set though ;)

Easy solution...

"HMRC reckons the trade in counterfeit goods costs the UK economy £9bn a year."

Maybe they should stop selling the "real" f***ers for so much here then... I can get a DS for nearly 50% less from a legit Asian supplier (especially if I go there and haggle), but local retailers are forbidden from importing them. Even the playing field, and people won't be so tempted to buy from illegitimate sources. Same with CD, games, etc - we're ripped off constantly so we look for ways to not get ripped off. If this involves less-than-legit merchandise, so be it.

Bah

Once more Chinese ingenuity at cutting production costs threatens the lives of tax payers!

No doubt the casings will prove to be coloured with lead paint and the electronics probably give off mutagenic radiation during play.

Something must be done!

Counterfeit?

"Counterfeit goods also cause considerable damage to the UK economy by undermining genuine UK retailers and small businesses who are honest and abide by the rules."

Counterfeit as in parallel import, right? Yes, UK retailers are undermined by parallel imports but the UK economy isn't. In fact the economy as a whole is better off because more money can be spent on other goody goods. It all just depends on ones point of view.

If there weren't the dodgy power supplies for Chinese market. Probably they will kill UK children and other bastards. Just consider the Chinese population and how many (little) will buy such a console. Let's face it, they can easily cope with some fatalities. Or to quote Mao: China can risk a nuclear war because there will be enough Chinese left afterwards...

EAfH

Safety, right.

So buy a 'fake' DS, then buy a UK-approved appropriately rated PSU; problem solved.

Of course that's always assuming that the problem exists in the first place. What proportion of these PSUs would have had UK safety certificates if they'd been tested? I'd hazard a guess at all of them. It's not like the PSU you get with the UK version is lovingly hand made from the finest ingredients by a family business down the road - they're cheap imported crap as well.

Market differential...

Thats what this is about, the UK price is what the RETAILERS think the market can stand, Nintendo probably make a bit more, but most is the RETAILERS profit.

I worked for a major electronics importer in the 80's, factory gate price for one item was ~£16 each, add some shipping costs and import duty + vat and a 50% mark up ~£35, the TRADE price was ~£90 and RETAIL ~£185!

Grey market items are legal imports not supported by manufacturer bought elseware and shipped in, legal in the US but effectively illegal here because of the CE mark requirement.

Perhaps its the short fall of VAT and import duty thats behind the Customs activity!

Mis-Information AGAIN!

I have to say that the reports on this are highly mis-leading.

There is no evidence that the PSU's blow up. They are just saying it is a possibility. By the same token, it's also a possibility that the PSU will get up in the middle of the night, load your car up with your TV/Video/DVD/Computer and anything else it likes and go off for a drive to a 2nd hand shop. It's not likely to happen, but it's a possibility.

Even if the PSU's haven't been tested, that is not a basis to stop them coming in. They can however stop the one's that break the copyright law (IE using Nintendo's logo's and name). As said before, ask for no PSU and get one in this country.

I hate it when they spin these stories up to the point that you can't believe the media. I think we should plug these PSU's in HMRC offices over the xmas period to see what happens, unfortunately I suspect that the offices will still be there in the new year. It's still a win-win situation!

More from HMRC

Hello,

I've just phoned Customs in response to these comments.

First of all they're insisting these are fakes, not just grey imports. But some of them are "grey dragon" machines destined for, the spokesman thought, for the Japanese market - these also had a dubious power supply.

The power supply is dodgy - a British kid was injured by a similar power supply used on a different console bought in Thailand.

As for the cost of reverse engineering such a console - as another commenter said these often come from the same factory using cheaper materials.

cheers

john

re: what john oates said

This would seem to be similar to the fake drugs that have been becoming a serious problem - they are made in the same factories as the genuine, after hours, but without the quality control or permission of the owning company.

@Destroy All Monsters - still think it's an acceptable thing to do? Import non-tested ripped off hardware where no royalties to the creator have been paid? I can't see how it is.

@No evidence of PSUs blowing up AC - There doesn't need to be (although there is) because power supplies are one of the few parts of modern electronics that can seriously screw up. There are countless examples of cheapo PSUs burning, just ask MS! I also know of a couple of people who've had PSUs burn.

Heres the thing

Theres a good chance these are probably the DS's that failed inspection and were thrown in the to be destroyed bin for some reason. So yes you might get a perfectly fine system that only has a cosmetic glitch or there might be a problem with a processor when certain games are fired up which if this is the case as its highly likely some of them could be a potential hazard by overcharging the battery or shorting it.

Or there breaking in at night and firing up Nintendo's factory and punching out extra chips like I believe they were doing with the counterfeit Cisco gear awhile back.

Wow

Doing that with Vuitton bags is one thing, doing that with a game console...

It's probably about impossible to do it without being the Chinese factory actually making the consoles for Nintendo in the first place, I would think? Maybe Nintendo should ask its suppliers a couple of questions?

I say, the only way to be sure is for some enterprising journalist to buy one of these "fakes", open it and compare!

POPstation et al?

Are these crap like the various 'popstation' and 'neo double games' that ashens reviews?

@Stevie

I'm a big supporter of mutagenic radiation during play. Tentacles FTW!

Exploding power supplies

... are not limited to illegitimate counterfeit goods; remember the kerfuffle with Playstation recently? (my work colleague says one of his went up in smoke) Even that pales against exploding batteries. The only real difference between a legitimate and fake power supply is that only one of these will be recalled if there is a genuine design/manufacturing problem.