I deeply regret to learn that you had a very unpleasant experience while playing one of our products, and I would like to apologize for having lacked the ability to prevent it from taking place. What happened, I believe, is that a player circulated such modified data for Animal Crossing for the Wii, and meant for it to be a bad joke, only to cause a very unpleasant experience for those who witnessed what these modified data did with their game. To explain why this sort of incident happens, video game platforms are equipped with various security features to prevent unauthorized modifications and acts of piracy to play games for free, and in the beginning, these features were effective on the Nintendo DS and the Wii. However, there are people who share information with others through networks and try to break through security as a hobby, and eventually announce the results of their hacking activities through the Internet, resulting in a vicious cycle in which more people are encouraged to use these unauthorized methods. Once they break through our security, we make an effort to fix the security hole, but this turned out to be a futile cat-and-mouse chase as they quickly managed to make a hole in our security system again. As a result, we have been unable to put a complete halt to the circulation of such modified data.
In developing the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS, we recognized that security is an extremely important factor for the sake of our business and in making sure that our consumers feel that playing our products is safe. While some acts of piracy are still possible in its DS-compatibility mode, as we had to ensure that the Nintendo DS software could still be played on the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo 3DS itself still maintains a robust security system, even after this much time has passed since its launch. Various attempts have so far been made to compromise the security of the system, but of course, security is like a multilayered fire door. Even if the outermost layer is wrenched half open, as long as there are other layers behind it, I do not believe the system will be hacked in an overly short cycle. Of course, security that is designed by humans is never perfect, but at the same time, should our security fail, we have to come up with a way to update the system. These days, hardware features can be updated through a network by downloading a new system itself and replacing the old system with the new one. This does indeed enhance the overall security of the system, but in fact, all of our devices before the Nintendo 3DS had one major problem. They were structured in such a way so that unless the user proactively performed a system update him/herself, the update could never be done.
Although consumers knew that it was better to perform system updates, many did not perform them, as it was often the case that they were simply never made aware that they were available. As with smartphones, tablets, computers and operating systems, many devices today have an auto-update feature, where updates are automatically downloaded when there is an Internet connection, and put on standby, and a message that says Updates are available for your system. Would you like to proceed? appears later before the user finally installs the updates. At the moment the Nintendo 3DSs security remains robust, but we have prepared ourselves to minimize the damage should our security fail. Please note that, in a sense, we learned a very bitter lesson from the Nintendo DS and the Wii, and we have put it to good use in designing the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U.
