@mullen

A self-published smartphone game means the maker collects almost all the revenue. For a self-published eshop game, the game has to hit a critical mass of sales before the maker gets to collect any revenue. Someone making a marginal or bad game will probably look to the smartphone market first. And someone making a good game may do that as well. The probability for profits are just greater.

Compare it to the book market. A physical hardcover sells for $30. An ebook of the same title may sell for $10. But you only collect 15% of sales on your hardcovers. Meanwhile you collect 70% on your ebooks. So it's $4.50 per hardcover sale or $3 per ebook sale. On paper that looks like hardcovers (think 3DS) sounds better. Then then when you factor in quantity sold, ebooks are better (think smartphones) because they are cheaper and thus sell far more.

@bassoongoon

You're an undergrad student but you make up a very small percentage of the global population. Right now more than 50% of phones in use in the States are smartphones. And any white or pink collar working adult pretty much has to have one. I'd imagine a lot of blue collar working adults probably have one as well.

Clever but it looks massive. It would be better as a tablet. Hopefully it would have real browsing and email capabilities too. Otherwise it's basically a pseudo-detachable WiiU gamepad.

I'll say it again, as more people switch to tablet/phone gaming because the games are more casual-gamer-friendly and much much cheaper, we're going to see fewer sales for traditional handheld consoles. That's going to mean fewer titles being offered and hence, higher prices as retailers have to figure out ways to cover their costs via higher margins on a per unit basis because they just can't come up with the quantity numbers they had in the past.

You'd be foolish to believe that tablets and smartphones are a fad. They are easier to access and always on hand. I could see Nintendo working with Google to put out an android handheld (like the Nexus 4, 7, or 10) but that also has access to the eshop. Or it could look like one of those Chinese-made WiiU gamepad clones. That would probably sell amazingly.

Let's reevaluate here for a minute and try to look outside of the echo chamber:
1. You are all here on a video game blog site because you are all really into video games.
2. How many unique users are there on this site and others like it? Maybe 1 million? 2 million?
3. How many people bought a Wii? In the first 4 years of its existence, 30 million wiis were sold. I would venture to say that anyone who bought a Wii after December 2010 would be considered a very late adopter.

So we're looking at between 1-2 million "hardcore" gamers and maybe another 56 million "regular" gamers (2 times the 28 million other wiis sold to account for PS3s and XBox360s as well). And then, assuming nobody who isn't a regular or hardcore gamer bought a PS3 or XBox, we're looking at probably an equal number of casual gamers who bought a Wii for Wii Sports type of games.

So right there you're looking at a 50/50 split. But wait. What about all the people that didn't buy a console but do play games on their phone or tablet? Anyone and everyone between the ages of 6 and 106 are potential buyers of games on those devices. Looking just at the industrial world and wealthy of the developing world:

We're looking at 60 million potential serious or hardcore gamers versus nearly 3 billion potential casual gamers.

Now ask yourself which market you'd rather be in if you were the one selling games. Even if the hardcore gamers are paying $60 a game and the casual gamers are paying $3 a game, that's still not even close when you consider that the casual gamers outnumber you 50 to 1.

Nobody is saying there won't be consoles any more. It's just that they are going to take a back seat. I imagine that means we will see heavy price hikes to traditional console games over the next generation.

@ferthepoet Bingo. That's exactly right. The Wii U just doesn't appeal to a casual gamer. If you look at its sales numbers, they aren't too different from the sales numbers of the PS3 or XBox 360. The Wii was an aberration and the Wii owners who bought it solely for Wii Sports and maybe Mario Party are the people that are switching over to tablets. Those buyers are not going to come back until a virtual reality system (or some other new concept) comes out. To most people, the Wii U is just a Wii with a tablet. And if they already own a Wii and they already own a tablet, why bother spending another $300-$400?

I agree with this assessment. A lot of people purchased the Wii because it was a more accessible way to get into video games. But tablets and phones serve that same purpose. You aren't going to be able to crack into that segment of the market once they start getting into their tablets. In the end you're going to see only the "hardcore" gamers buying systems (as we're seeing with the Wii U already). My 3DS XL will probably be the last pure video game system I buy. I'm not someone who goes gaga over new graphics or play control. And if I can hook up a bluetooth wiimote or ps3 controller to my tablet and play, I could see that as the future of gaming for me at some point.

So we won't be able to use then but will we be able to finally delete them?

What a joke. Is this the biggest story today? Let's put 2 and 2 together:
1. Amazon is SOLD OUT of Nintendo products. That bodes well for the 3DS and WiiU.
2. Amazon has to have 3rd party sellers fill that void.
3. Amazon makes less money off 3rd party sells.
4. Amazon would rather you buy stuff directly from them, hence the push for other consoles.

Case closed.

Awesome. I'm so glad I waited to register. Now granted I was waiting on it so I could secure gold/platinum for next year, but I'll take a free game. Unfortunately I have the 3 of those I'd want on cart already. I guess I'll get Mario 3D and sell my cart on ebay. That'll basically pay for LM2 for me Not too shabby!

If you have to swipe to roll, I'm out. Why can't they just make use of the physical buttons for once?

One word: preorder.

Are we supposed to pretend that these 3DS games aren't total crap? Or aren't rehashes that nobody redeemed coins for the last time around? Guess I'm waiting another month. Though for those of you that don't have Paper Mario, I guess something good did come this month along with the rehashes.

If Nintendo wants us to buy their old crappy games, they need to 3Ditize them. I mean I love classics, but this is not a classic in anything but the age.

Sounds pretty good actually. Hopefully this forces Nintendo's hand and we finally get video output for the DS and 3DS lines.

If NoA did this, I'd get an XL. Otherwise, I'm not going to bother upsizing.

Photoshop anyone?

I bought it and beat it 100% with all 4 characters in less time than it takes to get through a final fantasy or dragon quest game. I really want to like it and even popped it in yesterday but couldn't get myself to want to play beyond completing a daily challenge.

There just isn't enough to the game. The whole thing feels like a demo.

Sadly I give it a 5/10. It's just plain average.

I'm holding out hope that DLC does emerge at some point so that's why I'm not trading it in. But otherwise I would have swapped it out when I got Code of Princess.

I wonder how many blocks this will take up.

If this was rated higher than PushMo it looks like a must-have. I'll pick it up this week.

I pre-ordered it and got it last Tuesday. Sadly I haven't had a chance to play it yet! Life gets in the way so often.

That's crap. I was really looking forward to this. It was the reason I didn't get the XL.

You had me at RPG.

@ouroborous

True. Why couldn't Nintendo offer a subscription service? Pay $10 a month and have access to the whole NES and SNES libraries on your 3DS. Nothing would download directly — you'd have to play it through the shop or something. I'm sure that would be a profitable venture.

Another update just means another workaround by the hackers.

Eventually Nintendo is going to realize the only way to avoid this is by going fully digital on the next version and not including a gameslot. Until then, we'll have to keep dealing with bimonthly updates for nothing but security purposes.

They need to bring back the sales. $8 for a download I will play 5 hours max is just too much for me.

the us versions are available on the us website for the game: mariotennisopen.nintendo.com

I think I'd rather have Kid Icarus Uprising 2 instead of series 2 cards. Maybe it's just me...

If it's priced right, I'd consider this. I still have my Sega CD 3-in-1 with columns on it. Haven't played it in at least 15 years though!!!!!!

Waste of R&D money. And then we wonder why we pay as much as we do for games and systems. Bad move Nintendo.

@Miroku Oh that makes more sense now. I was going to say, stopping those flash carts just seems pointless. But if this is for eshop security, then that's clearly something useful. The same people that can steal games can probably steal credit card numbers.

That's very different than someone purchasing a counterfeit game from Hong Kong or something.

Why even bother? The hackers must just keep coming up with new ways to get into it and then we get these responses. But seriously all it does it get my hopes up that we're getting something good and then.... nothing.

Starship Defense is a lot of fun and I'm glad they put that one up because the reviews made it look good but I couldn't justify the price. Bansai Barber just doesn't seem like it has enough content for me to spend 150 coins. So far I've gotten Pictobits, MvDK MMA, Starship Defense, Fluidity, Majora's Mask, and You, Me, and the Cubes. I've definitely spent a fair share of coins and I'm down to the last few hundreds. So I'm just going to have to bet on a better game coming next week since we've had so many good ones so far.

@chewytapeworm Agreed! But they don't seem to want to rerelease rereleases.

At least they're starting to understand that they need to discount the digital stuff if they want it to sell.

@SteveW Have you played all of those? That's a crazy number. I've probably owned close to 100 wii games but many of those were traded for other ones so that right now I have about 30 in my possession.

If the "smaller" games are about 300MB a piece, that means assuming nothing else on the card at all and a 32GB card (the largest a 3DS can use) can hold 100 games after formatting eats its chunk. Of course you probably will have about 4 GB in saves, 3dsware, music, video, etc. (or at least I do right now on my 8GB card), so you're looking at closer to 90 games max. At $40 a pop, you're talking about $3,600 in games. God help us if we spend that much money on video games...

More realistically, someone like me with my 8GB card that has 4GB free on it can hold about 12 retail games. Which, if I so chose to download my games seems like a good number.

In conclusion, a 2 or 4 GB card just won't cut it. Aim for an 8 or 16. The 32 seems like overkill.

Baggy cargo pants are going to have to come back into fashion for me to be able to take one of these on the go.

@SkywardLink98 Good call. The pre-order item would probably go for 300 coins on there anyway!