Tag Archives: datel

Court filings from Dec 30 reportedly show Microsoft and Datel reaching an out of court settlement in a suit which has stretched for over a year.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation has spoken out against Microsoft due to its suit with Datel over the UK firm’s third-party memory cards for Xbox 360.

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Are you one of those PS3 owner who just has way too many peripherals and not enough USB ports to accommodate them?

Well, then fear not our slot challenged friends – Datel has a solution for you.

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Microsoft’s suing Datel over its TurboFire and WildFire 360 wireless controllers, claiming the UK firm’s copied its own handsets.

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Datel’s taking Microsoft to court over the fact it blocked third-party 360 memory units in its last title update.

“The dashboard update is intended to, and does in fact, disable Datel’s memory cards,” said the company in the lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

“On information and belief, Microsoft’s purpose in disabling Datel’s memory cards is to prevent consumers from choosing a Datel product that offers far better value for the price. There is no benefit to consumers from Microsoft’s decision to target and disable Datel memory cards. To the contrary, Microsoft’s actions will leave approximately 50,000 consumers with useless memory cards (and without the ability to access their data on the cards), forestall innovation, and deprive future consumers of the benefits of competition.”

You can read the full suit here, should you feel the need.

Datel’s expressed “disappointment” at Microsoft’s decision to disallow use of third-party 360 memory units in the console’s November software update.

“We are following this issue and awaiting the outcome like everyone else,” a rep told CVG.

“If the Major Nelson blog is to be taken at face value then we’re disappointed to see that Microsoft are taking these steps to prevent customers from exercising their freedom of choice.

“Everyone is looking for ways to make their cash go further at the moment and we believe that Max Memory offers a good value, high capacity, alternative to the official Memory Unit.”

Major Nelson said earlier this week that only Microsoft memory units will be supported after the update goes live.

Gamesgeek’s apparently sent an email out containing a statement from Datel on Freeloader’s incompatibility with the now-released Wii Firmware 3.3. It doesn’t look good, in a nutshell.

We have received this from Datel today regarding Freeloader – and we wanted to let you know this important information ASAP to keep you informed:

*** Please note, due to circumstances beyond our control Wii Freeloader is not compatible with latest version Wii firmware 3.3 and higher, just released (released as an online update 17/06/2008). You can continue to use Wii Freeloader perfectly with any Wii console running firmware 3.2 and below. If you upgrade to Wii firmware 3.3 or higher this WILL disable the Freeloader function and it will stop working for all future use on all import games. ***

Thanks, GoNintendo.

Play-Asia’s just put the following message to those with pre-orders for the Japanese version of Mario Kart Wii, according to GoNintendo:

This is an important e-mail update regarding your pending preorder Mario Kart Wii (w/ Wii Handle) (Nintendo™ Wii Japan, NTSC J)

We received the first small delivery today for testing and unfortunately we have to inform you, that the game is not compatible with the Datel Freeloader (US and PAL Version).

In case that this affects your preorder, please contact our customer service as soon as possible to amend/cancel your order, as otherwise we will ship your order within the next 48 hours.

If you own a Japanese Wii and you do not want to change your orders, you do not have to reply to this email.

Once again thanks for shopping with us and sorry for the inconvenience caused.

That’s a shame. Or not. Depends whether or not you’re Nintendo Europe, really.

This reckons so. We reported on Friday that Datel’s region-cracking device had survived a minor firmware update, but a second patch has apparently rendered Wii Freeloader useless. Whoops. Just goes to show, doesn’t it.

Update: Apparently this is all an “April Fool’s joke” and it Wii Freeloader hasn’t been blocked at all. More pure genius from the internet as it happens.

It seems Datel has lived up to its earlier promise that the Wii Freeloader would be firmware proof.

An minor firmware update was released yesterday that added ad support for the upcoming WiiWare in the Shop Channel.

Reports from various Wii-centric forums across the ‘net say Freeloader has held firm, so users can still boot games from other regions on their machines.

By Mike Bowden

According to this, the Wii version of Freeloader can’t be beaten by firmware uprages. The device allows any Wii to play import games, so you can buy a game from the US or Japan and play it in your European Wii.

“We can confirm that on every occasion that the product is used when the disc is inserted in the console that it allows the usage of any imported Wii game discs and disables the console from been able to update its firmware, if the disc is removed after been inserted and reinserted this will again enable the console to update its firmware but still allow the usage of the any imported Wii game discs,” said manufacturer Datel.

Freeloader for Wii should release in the middle of March.

According to this, Datel is going to release Freeloader for Wii in ten days. The device essentially breaks console region locks, so you can play games from anywhere in the world on a single machine. We’ll bring you more on this when it launches.