Topic: DSiWare games can only be downloaded on 3DS internal memory? :(

This is my first time downloading DSiWare. With the eShop closing in a year, I wanted to get most of the DSiWare games I missed. Why can't we download them on the SD card? Seems very inconvenient.

They can be backed up to an SD card, but in order to actually play them, they need to be transferred to the internal memory.

Yup you can "put them away" into your SD card, and swap them in and out whenever you want to play something else.

It's a bit of a limitation with DS software on the 3DS. The one retail DS game they released digitally (Wario Ware Touched) has the same problem.

Because Nintendo....

@Link-Hero your 3DS should have enough internal memory for several games (like 10 to 20 of them depending on their size), and this is reserved for those games so don't feel like you're using up space something else could use, just plan ahead if you don't want to go over the internal limit.

Also old 3DS XL can only use up to 32GB sd card nothing higher not sure what amount of GB new 3DS XL can use.

All 3DS models officially support up to 32GB SDHC. However, that's the limitation of the 3DS Hardware, being formatted to only read FAT32, which is most commonly available on SD and SDHC Cards. Anything over 32GB is not SDHC, so you need to manually format the SD Card yourself. You can easily do 128GB SDXC.

Also, as multiple people have already said, the 1000ish blocks memory on the 3DS is part of how the 3DS uses DS mode. The DSi only had 1000 blocks of system memory available, but could store the entire DSiWare library on a large enough SD card no problem. Just remember to copy over the game you want to play before playing it. A bit of a hassle, yes, but considering the alternatives, it could be worse.