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Comment by LocalH | Hacker News Reader

They're not disabling anything. They're banning consoles from online services after attempts to connect to those online services with a pirated game. The device itself is perfectly usable for single-player gaming. This is exactly like Sony and Microsoft have already done for years. If the EU goes after Nintendo here, why haven't they already gone after Sony and Microsoft for the same thing?

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Do Microsoft and Sony ban the person or the actual console device? Nintendo are going for the account and the device for what amounts to unsanctioned-by-them use of software:

     "permanently ban those consoles from Nintendo's network."

     "a banned console will stay banned from the network"

I can say at least that the Xbox 360's standard ban for pirated games that failed verification checks was a console level ban, as in, you can take your hard drive and plug it into a new console and you're gaming again. There were also several times account bans were applied as well, like when Forza 3 dropped several weeks early and people tried playing online.

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