Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Musings on Nintendo's eShop

I've been a little busy in the Nintendo eShop, although "busy" for me is that I've downloaded four games (Gunman Clive, Castlevania: The Adventure, Art of Balance: Touch, and Mega Man II) and three demos (Art of Balance: Touch, Brain Age Concentration Training,and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate) since the beginning of the year.  The only curmudgeon I currently have, is that I started using my 3DS with the 2 Gigabyte card that came with the system.  If I had been thinking I would have used a separate higher memory card, say an 8 or 16 Gig card.  The card isn't just used for saved games and I found this out when I tried putting in a higher capacity card and upon booting up the system, all the games, applications and demos I had downloaded were missing.

The point then, is that while I do download a lot of games through Steam on my computer, I haven't purchased any game that is normally available for retail.  There are a number of games that are available  in the eShop (Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, Scribblenauts Unlimited, Fire Emblem Awakening, Brain Age Concentration Training, Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, Resident Evil The Mercenaries 3D, Code of Princess, Mario Kart 7, BIT.TRIP.SAGA, Star Fox 64 3D, et cetera) that I won't buy, mainly because I don't want to have three or four memory cards with varying amounts of games and applications.  

Another issue, for me at least, is that the prices in the eShop are pretty static, especially with the retail games compared to the Virtual Console games.  And the fact that the eShop retail games are sold at retail prices.  eShop Mario Kart 7 is priced the same as Gamestop Mario Kart 7: $39.99.  For some reason, I'm not about to spend $40 on an eShop purchase.  I don't know what it is, maybe it's the multiple stages of acquiring money to purchase: buy set amount with my credit card, then using the "credits" to purchase a game.  Plus you can only purchase one of four set amounts, $10, $20, $50 or $100.  If there were different amounts or if you could set your own amount, I would find that to be a slightly better system.  I always seem to have little bits left over from previous transactions where I have to buy another $10 and then I can buy another game or two and end up with another $1.67 left.

Lastly, I'd like to say that Nintendo needs to have an MP3 application in the eShop.  That was the second thing I looked for when I first started fiddling with my 3DS almost a year ago and I'm surprised that I haven't seen anything about one out yet.  I take my 3DS with me when I go up to the clubhouse gym and run on the treadmill so that I can earn 1 Play Coin for every 100 steps for a maximum of 10 coins in one day.  While running with the 3DS in my pocket, I would love it to be able to listen to music (while the system is closed, maybe that's a problem/issue?) while earning mah Play Coins.  So, someone needs to have Nintendo do this so I don't have to have my phone in my other pocket to listen to music.

Overall, and using the information from the "Activity Log's" Software Library, I've used the eShop 45 times, spending an average of 8 minutes each time I visit the store culminating in 6h21m since June 2012.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
It's Always High Quality

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like Nintendo (like most game companies) could really take a nod from Steam, with their ever-revolving sales. To put a fine point on it, my friend ZorTheRed recently said to me "I can't really justify paying full price for a game on Steam. Eventually, everything goes on sale."

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  2. For some reason, I'm not about to spend $40 on an eShop purchase. I don't know what it is, maybe it's the multiple stages of acquiring money to purchase: Kizi Games buy set amount with my credit card, then using the "credits" to purchase a game. Plus you can only purchase one of four set amounts, $10, $20, $50 or $100.

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  3. I think it will suit students when they do not have much money

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