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Opinion: It's time for Nintendo to wake up and smell the digital coffee

Full-priced digital titles highlights old problems

Opinion: It's time for Nintendo to wake up and smell the digital coffee
Without wishing to overstate the point, last week should have been one of the most significant in Nintendo's 122 year history - and yet it came and went with barely a mutter.

With the release of New Super Mario Bros. 2 on 3DS, Nintendo finally, finally embraced the digital distribution of its full boxed releases for the first time.

It's been a long time coming.

Nearly nine years after the launch of Steam, four years after the App Store's debut, and more than three years since Microsoft and Sony started selling full retail games on their respective online stores, Nintendo has rocked up at the digital party.

Practice makes perfect?

Ok, 'Rocked up' is being generous. 'Stumbled in bedraggled' is closer to the truth.

And yet it's not as if Nintendo hasn't had plenty of practice in getting here. In May 2008, it opened the doors of its Wii Shop 'channel', and a year later rolled out the DSiWare Shop across the world.



You could say that these stores were essentially an extended beta test - or at least that's what they appeared to be.

The available games were exclusively limited to low-priced indie titles and retro re-releases, partly due to file space considerations, but also because Nintendo showed no apparent desire in changing its extremely profitable retail sales model quite yet.

To be charitable, neither store was exactly an unqualified success.

Although the drip-feed of weekly content suggested a heavily curated approach, the quality level was patchy. It had its moments, sure, but without exception, the games were offered at winceworthy prices, often at multiples of what you could pick them up for on rival systems.

And judging by the initial content drop of retail games on the eShop last week, Nintendo feels confident/foolish enough to believe that it can play by different rules to everyone else.

Mega deals

Case in point, the aforementioned New Super Mario Bros. 2 - yours via the eShop for a mere £39.99, while Freakyforms Deluxe and New Art Academy can be downloaded for £24.99 and £29.99 respectively.

That's three handheld games for a fiver under a hundred quid. Roll it around your mouth: ninety four pounds ninety-seven pence.



Now, as much as we all appreciate the convenience factor of being able to grab games on the move, the concept of paying a premium for not having the cartridge, manual and box is a rather insane one.

A quick flick through the nation's online retailers reveals that physical copies of New Super Mario Bros. 2 are routinely on sale for ten pounds cheaper at around £29.99, while New Art Academy and Freakyforms Deluxe can be picked up for £22.99 and £19.99 respectively.

If the concept of value for money means anything to you at all, there's absolutely no incentive to pick up the digital version, especially given the many other disadvantages involved.

The future of frustration

For a start, owning the digital copy precludes your ability to a) trade it in later, b) lend it to a friend, and c) also hogs a large chunk of the flash storage.

If you plan on making a habit of owning digital versions, you'd also better get used to ball-ache of transferring your purchases every time you switch to a new Nintendo handheld. Oh, and you'll probably need a bigger SD card pretty soon, too.

Nintendo also hasn't cottoned onto the wild, scary concept of people (and families) owning more than one device. Once you make that purchase, the game is stubbornly locked to a single system and can't subsequently be downloaded on another 3DS until you transfer them to another one.

If, for example, you've got an original 3DS knocking around, and have just bought a 3DS XL and want to give your old device to your kid (as I do), you can't merely redownload those purchases like you can on any iOS device.



You have to either buy and download all your digital purchases all over again, one by one, or go through the monumentally tiresome process of transferring every purchase over wi-fi. Either way, you don't ever get to install the same application on two devices at the same time.

How very dare you.

Never lose it, never break it

And heaven forbid if you sell your 3DS, break it, lose it, or have it stolen. As any Wii or DSi owner will ruefully attest, if you want to try and get your purchases back in the event of misfortune, you'd better develop charm skills hitherto unknown to human kind, as Nintendo's convoluted, locked-down approach to the digital gaming economy doesn't believe in the kind of account-based system that Apple, Sony, Microsoft, Valve etc... use.

Why? Who the hell can unpick this miserly logic.

Presumably it's to make absolutely sure that you couldn't possibly cheat the system and give it to a friend. Don't believe me? Then a quick Google of the problem reveals the issue is rife, and boards are full of exasperated sob stories of lost purchases.

But if the problem was easily glossed over when users were chucking a few quid at games, it's an issue that will become a lot more well known once customers start to realise that they can't retrieve their entire collection of full-priced games. Imagine the stink if Apple pulled a trick like this.

Even users who download their games to an SD card can't simply expect to transfer their games to a new 3DS if their old once is broken. With your games locked to that specific system, the only way to rescue them is to send them off to a repair centre - but if they're stolen, tough luck.

The silent minority

For now, it's a problem that only the Nintendo hardcore are particularly aware of, and perhaps explains why a mere five per cent of sales of New Super Mario Bros. 2 have come via the eShop so far.

Evidently Nintendo realises that this is a problem, and word has it that the Wii U will see it switch to an account-based system. It's also thought that the 3DS eShop will eventually follow suit, but it strikes me as a little bizarre that Nintendo hasn't made the switch already.

By sticking to its uniquely archaic system of locking purchases to each system, and then also charging far more for them for the privilege, it merely risks driving even more customers away from its systems.

Nintendo might well enjoy more bankable IP than practically anyone in the business, but it might as well sit around a flaming pile of banknotes if it intends to persist with treating its digital consumers with such disdain.

Wake up, Nintendo.

There's no such thing as 'not enough time' in Kristan's world. Despite the former Eurogamer editor claiming the world record for the most number of game reviews written before going insane, he manages to continue to squeeze in parallel obsessions with obscure bands, Norwich City FC, and moody episodic TV shows. He might even read a book if threatened by his girlfriend.