With the problem of piracy gaining serious proportions, especially in the European and Asian countries, Satoru Iwata – the president of the Kyoto, Japan-based game-maker Nintendo Co. – revealed on Friday that the company intends beefing up anti-piracy measures in its forthcoming 3-D gaming system.

Though Iwata stopped short of disclosing anything about the company’s 3-D technology-equipped handheld game device, he did mention that the device will hit the stores sometime in the fiscal year through March 2011. Earlier, a couple of months back, Nintendo had said that it will give a peek at the 3-D machine at the June-scheduled E3 trade show in Los Angeles.

Noting that the move to reinforce anti-piracy measures in Nintendo’s 3-D machine is essentially aimed as a potential guard against software theft, Iwata, speaking at a Tokyo hotel, said that the problem of piracy had led to the recent plunge in sales of game software in Europe.

While Iwata refrained from disclosing any further details on the anti-piracy measures that Nintendo intends to take up for its 3-D console, he remarked: “We fear a kind of thinking is become widespread that paying for software is meaningless. We have a strong sense of crisis about this problem.”

Meanwhile, addressing concerns of the possible health effects of 3-D gaming, Iwata said that the 3-D function of the new console will be an easy turn-off one, enabling gamers to play games, with 3-D or without it.