NINTENDO 3DS

Toys R Us is apparently having a sale on launch titles; definitely seek out Ghost Recon Shadow Wars from that bunch if you like strategy games at all - it's my favorite game on the platform so far. get Cave Story off the eshop if you haven't played it before (or just want a portable version of it); also the 3D Excitebike while it's free.

Cheers for the tips. I've not turned the thing on yet so

get Cave Story off the eshop if you haven't played it before (or just want a portable version of it)

Can't find this.

I'm not impressed with the screen. I'd heard there's a sweet spot but in practice it's sort of ridiculous. OOT is orrite.

it's totally not worth it at the moment btw

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/28/nintendo-cuts-price-of-3ds-in-japan-by-40-to-190-other-markets-to-follow/

FORTY PERCENT

Those of us who already own one will get a load of free VC games.

10 NES games and 10 GBA games, confirming both of those systems are coming to the shop.

ha yes

Sweeet. Might be nice and cheap soon. In other news, apparently the new Pac Man game also has that bullshit single save game that can't be reset or deleted...

woof... 40%

don't know if I can hold out for 3DSi now

really annoyed about early adopting now

Anyone who owns a 3DS system and connects to the Nintendo eShop at least once before 11:59 p.m. EST on Aug. 11 is eligible for the following:

1. Starting Sept. 1, Nintendo 3DS Ambassadors will be able to download 10 NES™ Virtual Console™ games at no charge and before they are available in the Nintendo eShop to the general public. These games, including Super Mario Bros.™, Donkey Kong Jr.™, Balloon Fight™, Ice Climber™ and The Legend of Zelda™, are slated to become paid downloadable games, but Ambassadors get them early for free. Once the paid versions of the games are posted to the Nintendo eShop later in the year, the updated versions will be available to Ambassadors for download at no cost.

2. By the end of 2011, Nintendo will provide Ambassadors with 10 Game Boy Advance Virtual Console games. These include games like Yoshi’s Island™: Super Mario™ Advance 3, Mario Kart™: Super Circuit, Metroid™ Fusion, WarioWare™, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ and Mario vs. Donkey Kong™. These games will be available exclusively to Ambassadors, and Nintendo currently has no plans to make these 10 games available to the general public on the Nintendo 3DS in the future.

this sucks donkey balls. "sorry you wasted seventy bucks - here, have some ROMs!"

it would have been much smarter on their part to give early adopters like fifty bucks in credit on the eshop - admittedly they would have still had to pay the publishers for downloaded games rather than giving out first-party shit exclusively, but unlike with the PSN the install base is super-low so it might be worth it just for the brand equity and to get users involved in the eShop economy. instead they're going with "exclusivity!!!!!" when nobody with a brain could possibly think that they're going to keep stuff like Mario Kart or WarioWare just for folks who bought in early.

in other news, I started a new job which necessitates a long-ass bus ride, so I picked up one of these and urge anyone with a 3DS (or really even just a long commute and a bunch of battery-powered devices - this thing's been a lifesaver for both my Kindle and my iPhone too) to do the same.

it does suck donkey kong balls, but tbh, a price drop from an initial launch price is inevitable, and how often is that early adopters get any sort of reward/payback?

well they get the x amount of time they had to use the device before everyone else

it did kind of own to have one at E3 and get a fuckton of street passes every second; I filled out all the puzzles and got all the way through the Find Mii game once. probably not $70 worth of ownage though.

the really weird thing here is that historically Nintendo's always been the most resistant to price drops - back during 2009 and early 2010 when everyone was calling for them to cut the price of the Wii they held steady and talked about how a price drop would just devalue their unique entertainment opportunity; IIRC they even outright rejected the idea that it would help them get new fans and would only actually attract bargain-hunters. for them to slash so much off the price this early in the 3DS' lifecycle is pretty striking.

you are probably better positioned to know this but i thought there was a ~lot~ of consternation amongst snr execs @ nintendo about the success of the iphone/ipad/other devices & what it meant for the continued profitability of the handheld division? im not surprised theyre being v aggressive w/ the 3DS a large user base seems p vital to them

the success of the handheld division has to be of p strategic importance to the company overall as well, theyre not sony, & getting the 3DS into consumers hands is the first step so

I dunno, seems like a dying platform. I was at toys r us over the weekend and they were selling 3ds games buy 1 get 1 free, meanwhile the equivalent DS games were still selling fullprice.

interestingly enough, there have been a couple of tech sites reporting today that Apple's going to be making both the iPad & iPhone a lot cheaper starting later this year, so it's certainly possible Nintendo might cutting prices to cut those moves off at the knees rather than to go hard against the Vita. I do know that every time Nintendo's talked about iOS & Android games in the past they've always talked about them as completely different sectors of the market that they don't see as releasing a competing product (e.g. "They're making games you can buy for a dollar, we're making ~Entertainment Classics~ like Mario and Zelda games which people don't dispose of so easily"), so if this move is going after those games then it's a pretty striking about-face for them. of course, their revenue's down by more than half from last year - maybe they've just been dickslapped out of complacency w/r/t the gaming market. I personally still think it's a move against the Vita since everyone walked out of E3 talking about how great a value it is at $250 especially in comparision to what you get at that same price point with the 3DS, though.

I really can't wait to read what Malstrom has to say about this; he's been shitting all over the 3DS as something the market's going to reject since forever ago.

this sucks donkey balls. "sorry you wasted seventy bucks - here, have some ROMs!"

^

this is really long, but Malstrom OTM: http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/nintendo-cuts-profit-forecast-by-82/

ennh hes packaging a bunch of received wisdom around a basic 'games were better back then' message all delivered w/ tenuous grasp of grammar/basic writing

we should invite him to ILG, he'd fit right in

i kid.

xxpost +1 for his writing being the opposite of great but I dunno, I don't mind repackaged theory if it makes sense. I also don't really think he's saying that games were better back in the day so much as that Nintendo's biggest success stories all involve them making ballsy moves to differentiate themselves from their competition; whenever Nintendo's M.O. is to follow industry trends but (a) make them technologically superior in some way and (b) give them that ~~~~NINTENDO TOUCH~~~~, they invariably shit their pants in front of the entire market.

Virtual Boy was a ballsy move and a disaster.
SNES followed market trends & was a success.

both 3DS & Vita are going to struggle long term as they fight over a niche audience. gonna get ugly.

yeah fair enough his explicit argument is not that the games themselves were better but that console retail packages were better...

but i think its stupid to compare retail strategies btw a time when the industry was in its infancy and when theres a mature market for the product, also i think consumers perception of value is different now than it was in 85 but im sure any co. could move more units w/ a more attractive out-of-the-box package, but theres a trade-off there too. youd also have to convince retailers, who make most of their money on peripherals (partic. 3rd party peripherals), that they should still essentially take a loss on console sales by packaging fifty controllers and a power pad in box.

id also like to know what finance textbooks specifically cite 2012 as difficult economic year (intro to mayan finance?) & i think his grasp of recession-spending patterns is... uneducated? if anything i think the real problem (as above) w/ the 3DS isnt the handheld price but the software price which he spends v. little time on, or on the underlying factors that drive development costs (and hence retail price for games) upwards.

his argument dismissing the influence of inflation is also p lol

but i think its stupid to compare retail strategies btw a time when the industry was in its infancy and when theres a mature market for the product, also i think consumers perception of value is different now than it was in 85 but im sure any co. could move more units w/ a more attractive out-of-the-box package, but theres a trade-off there too.

I see what you're getting at but the counter-argument is Wii Sports. Wii + Wii Sports may not have been as generous an offering as NES + SMB/Duck Hunt/Track & Field + 2 controllers + light gun + power pad, but it's still a clear concession to out-of-the-box playability and it's safe to say it was pretty instrumental to helping the Wii catch on. Malstrom's point is that these days console manufacturers don't even try to hook you up - their entire sales pitch is CHECK OUT THIS THING - BETCHA CAN'T WAIT TO BUY IT AND THEN SPEND SOME MORE MONEY IN ORDER TO HAVE ANY FUN WITH IT, and exigencies of the industry or not I agree with him that that kinda sucks.

it's also worth noting that at launch the 3DS actually bent over backwards trying to provide entertainment options which don't require a cart (Face Raiders, Find Mii, the puzzle-piece swapping, the music player) but none of them took off because the games were all shallow & lazy as shit and only ever succeeded in spite of themselves (and I like all those games! just couldn't in good conscience ever endorse anyone buying the system just to play them). kinda striking to see the company which recognized SMB and Wii Sports as killer apps throw out the equivalent of Carl Lewis' first pitch.

youd also have to convince retailers, who make most of their money on peripherals (partic. 3rd party peripherals), that they should still essentially take a loss on console sales by packaging fifty controllers and a power pad in box.

(a) retailers make their money on used games, which is why you can even get them at Best Buy now
(b) retailers made money hand over fist off those big ass Guitar Hero games back in the day

I'd bet most prospective 3DS shoppers don't even know about Face Raiders etc. (it's certainly not being demoed at Best Buy/Gamestop). I can't help but agree that the "out of the box" playability did help the Wii a lot, people were able to play it and try it much more easily than say, this Xbox 360 I just got which came with one controller and a 15 minute demo of Modern Warfare 2.

The original DS had a pretty boring line-up too, but it had no competition for those 6 months or so it took to get some decent games out.

The retail strategy thing seems loaded with assumptions. It was the system price that stopped me from buying one at launch (the game prices didn't help). If they had launched at $180, they'd already have my money. Now that Vita is on the way and I need a new iPod Touch, I don't even know if I'll bother at this price.

Does make me wonder though - did Carnival Games sell better than Super Mario Galaxy?

did Carnival Games sell better than Super Mario Galaxy?

in other news, Wal-Mart is apparently going to start selling the 3DS at the new price starting on the 9th, which gives you a few days to snag one for cheap AND register so's you can get 20 ROMs. Devil Survivor Overclocked is supposed to be out later this month too, although its release date has been bumped like three times already so who knows.

oh and Paper Mario 3D still doesn't have a release date :( :( :( if this game doesn't come out I am going to stab EVERYONE.

there's been some talk that the NES games aren't going to be straight ROM dumps, as Nintendo have indicated that multiplayer & other features will be added at some future point. who knows, doubt they know what they are doing at this point.

if they're still going to give away DLs of Four Swords Adventure like they said at E3, I sure hope that mindset carries over and they add internet multiplayer.

also my favorite sub-topic to emerge from this whole 20-free-games thing is all the vidya game dorks on SA & GAF going GUYS WHAT IF MOTHER 3 WAS ONE OF THE GAMES THEY GAVE AWAY

hahaha no

Would be good though...

all would be forgiven

With all these nice price drops, etc, I picked one up from Morrison's yesterday for £120, which seems good (though I think Amazon were doing them for £115 yesterday). Got Ghost Recon, which is cool and was pretty blown away by the AR mini games. Haven't turned 3D down from Full so far.

http://h5.abload.de/img/untitledv84d.png

it is:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12082922/games/69799455.jpg

Have been playing Ocarina of Time 3D and have to say that the UI rewrite is outstanding. I remember being annoyed by the menu system in OoT last time I went back to it (playing it on the gamecube), but this is great. It's also now been sufficiently long since I played it last, let alone completed it last, that I'm really enjoying it.

Got SFIV on the way, then I think it's really only Steel Diver (kinda) and Pilotwings that I'm interested in until some more stuff drops, Cave Story 3D in particular, as long as they don't charge silly money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_ecesGCI3U

ok this looks pretty rad

xpost despite the license, Ghost Recon Shadow Wars is easily the best non-OoT 3DS game; it's like having a portable X-Com. I think it's cheap now that everyone's frantically trying to get rid of all their 3DS stock.

can't stop playing Aura Aura Climber. has that 'just one more go' thing, especially the endless mode.

holy fuck, my copy of Devil Survivor Overclocked just showed up! guess that means there are THREE 3DS games worth owning now.

Apparently no plans to release Devil Survivor over here in Europe :(

boy they really fucked this up six ways to sunday didn't they

First batch of free games just went up. This is what happens:

- you read the notification that tells you how to download the games
- you have to write down or memorise the instructions which are (I might have the names wrong but I don't care):

1. open the eshop
2. tap "settings / other" in the menu thing
3. open "titles you've downloaded"
4. keep tapping down until you get to the first free game
5. tap "re-download"
6. download the game
7. the system takes you back to step 2 and you have to do THE WHOLE THING 10 MORE TIMES

Right at the very bottom of the free games there's a thing called "Nintendo 3DS Ambassador Certificate". It's five times bigger than any of the games because it's a video. This is what's in the video: four minutes of SIDE-SCROLLING TEXT, with REALLY BAD CHEAP MUZAK, that tells you HOW TO DOWNLOAD ALL THE GAMES YOU HAVE JUST DOWNLOADED. It's four minutes because after 30 seconds IT DOES IT ALL AGAIN IN LIKE FIFTY DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.

I hope a hoos reads and enjoys this because it is seriously THE STUPIDEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN, EVER, including PT Cruisers and wars.

Thanks for posting that - had no message or anything to tell me that the games have arrived but went through that method and they're all there!

On a non-Ambassador tip, anyone know/able to find anything more exact than "September" for when Four Swords will be available for free? I can only find the vague month-long timeline.

took me longer to rearrange my home page icons than downloading the games themselves
folders plz