Gaming 3DS Library shock

[Foxi4]

Say, wasn't that numbering system including EU and JP roms? So for most games that would be 1 counted 3 times.

That, an NES had alternate dumps in the thousands. In reality, there's around 822 games available for the NES (PAL/NTSC-U) and 1055 Famicom games (NTSC-J), and obviously there's duplicates between the two lists. The DS fares similarly, NoA lists around 1297 titles. Those are Wikipedia numbers, so they may differ from the real number of releases, but not substantially. The reason why there's so many scene releases is indeed the number of regional releases.

 

[emigre]

People with flashcards that download the entire NDS library aren't gamers.
Their just hoarders.

Honestly, the 3DS has a pretty sad library indeed.

I completely agree the 3DS sucks

 

[zhdarkstar]

Even if you take regional releases and eShop dumps into consideration, there's still been around 250-300 retail 3DS games in the library in just 3 years. Considering that there are at least another 3 years of the 3DS' lifecycle, I fully expect that number to reach 500 by the time we get the next Nintendo handheld.

EDIT: Btw, how many people have actually played 300+ video games in their lives? I don't mean trying a game out for 5 minutes before moving on to the next one, but playing the game for at least an hour or so to know what the game is actually about.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I own a 3DS and holy shit it got boring real quick. I played Pokemon on it and tried a few other games but holy shit everything is so underwhelming. And Nintendo is the king of price gouging so I don't want to pay $30-$40 for a fucking Mario platformer I'll crank out in a day.

The Vita doesn't have quantity but at least the games it does I can put double digit hours into.

 

[hippy dave]

I'm playing a few 3ds games on and off, but I'm hitting the ds game library pretty hard in between, and now even gba (Guru Logic Champ is a ridiculously good game).

 

[zhdarkstar]

The biggest problem that Sony handhelds have had is a lack of "killer apps" that drive the hardware sales. PSP had some 3rd party support that pushed sales in the Final Fantasy titles, but almost nothing in the 1st party department that had units flying off the shelves. The bulk of the PSP games you consistently heard people talk about were primarily JRPGs from SE, NIS, or Atlus. I've probably gotten about 10x more mileage out of my PSP as a portable emulator or xbox memory unit than from playing PSP titles.

The DS. on the other hand, had a similar level of 3rd party support while also having monstrous first-party support. While never reaching the graphical quality of the PSP, DS games had more variety and innovation in their gameplay through the dual screens and touchscreen input. It was the first, but not the last, time that Sony learned the hard way that having the better hardware doesn't guarantee supremacy. The group behind the first video I posted also made another video discussing the pattern of powerful systems losing their generation's console war:


I'll be the first to admit that the 3DS library doesn't have the breadth of the DS library. Both the 3DS and Vita had a portion of their market share stolen by the abomination that is mobile gaming. It's an unfortunate shame that more resources are going towards gaming on a non-gaming platform than software designed to run on hardware built for gaming. If any one thing threatens to bring about the next big gaming crash, it's mobile gaming causing the perceived value of video games to bottom out. For every $30-40 handheld game, there are dozens of freemium mobile games that are undercutting the market. One of the unfortunate side effects of it is the increased amount of shorter games for the same prices as before. The prices of retail handheld games isn't going to drop anytime soon because that $30-40 price point is part of the break-even point for most developers/publishers. Instead, it's the development cycles that have been reduced in order to offset the losses incurred because of the mobile gaming bubble.

Normally, I try not to post multiple videos in one post to make a point, but the latest episode of Game Theory goes into the mobile gaming craze from a pretty educational standpoint:

 

[emigre]

I own a 3DS and holy shit it got boring real quick. I played Pokemon on it and tried a few other games but holy shit everything is so underwhelming. And Nintendo is the king of price gouging so I don't want to pay $30-$40 for a fucking Mario platformer I'll crank out in a day.

The Vita doesn't have quantity but at least the games it does I can put double digit hours into.

It is funny, I own about the same number of physical gaems for 3DS and Vita but I do spend more time with the Vita.

 

[nexuspunk]

the problem with the 3ds, is that its not getting the same push the other nintendo consoles have gotten. For example mario kart 8 the newest version in the mario kart franchise which has done rather well on both handheld and regular consoles was only pushed to the wii u. meaning that another title that could have easily also been added, to the 3ds library was passed over and instead handed to the wii u, if nintendo actually cracked down, and tried to expand on the 3ds library and i mean really tried. people would appreciate it more. but it's becoming more and more unloved because they would rather focus on the wii u and hand the 3ds the scraps that they wouldn't release on a wii u.

 

[emigre]

the problem with the 3ds, is that its not getting the same push the other nintendo consoles have gotten. For example mario kart 8 the newest version in the mario kart franchise which has done rather well on both handheld and regular consoles was only pushed to the wii u. meaning that another title that could have easily also been added, to the 3ds library was passed over and instead handed to the wii u, if nintendo actually cracked down, and tried to expand on the 3ds library and i mean really tried. people would appreciate it more. but it's becoming more and more unloved because they would rather focus on the wii u and hand the 3ds the scraps that they wouldn't release on a wii u.

3DS got Mario Kart 7

 

[Foxi4]

*Snipperoo! Broken "Specs don't matter!" Rethoric!*

Specs absolutely do matter. If Nintendo came out with an 8-bit 256 colours 2D-only SD home console tomorrow, it would only appeal to hardcore fans and nobody would develop games for it. Literally nobody would care - it'd be an oddity, not a real contender for the title.

There's a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to a console's success, factors such as timing of release, the initial library, the price point, the state of economy, the exchange rate of yen and yuan versus the dollar and the euro, licensing terms of the manufacturer, the pre-exisiting infrastructure (including online infrastructure these days), marketing, the success or failure of the previous systems and many others, including the specs.

The common misconception spread around the Internet is that when people say "specs matter" they mean "the best specs humanly possible" wheras in fact the specs merely have to be adequate for a given generation of systems - just about enough to please developers and make development relatively easy. The system simply has to be adequate to appeal to the customer, but at the same time it has to be affordable, so you have to strike a balance here. Remember - games come to successful systems and successful systems strike a balance with most of their qualities.

 

[zhdarkstar]

nexuspunk, your logic about Mario Kart 8 is flawed. Ever since the first Mario Kart game, every Nintendo console only had one version of Mario Kart released for it, with the exception of the GBC having none. The 3DS got its Mario Kart game years ago with Mario Kart 7, which is still being played regularly today. 3DS didn't miss out on its share of Mario Kart, it was simply the Wii U's turn to get Mario Kart.

As for the marketing aspect of the two Nintendo consoles, the 3DS doesn't really need too much marketing as it pretty much sells itself due to the legacy of Nintendo's handhelds, especially the DS' success in the previous generation. As soon as Pokemon X/Y came out, there was little need for Nintendo to do anything else to sell more units. With the Hoenn remakes and Smash Bros on the horizon, word of mouth marketing will do as good of a job as any marketing campaign. By the end of 2014, the 3DS will be printing money all on its own like its predecessor.

Nintendo is making the right move to focus their efforts on the Wii U, as it has drastically underperformed to what was initially expected. The source of the Wii U's problems can be traced to Nintendo's own decisions, therefore it only makes sense that Nintendo would be the only ones that can do anything about it. One of the main reasons that the Wii U suffers in the 3rd party department is the lack of DirectX support. The Wii already made it hard for third-party developers to include Wii in their multi-platform releases with its lack of HD output and penchant to push the motion control gimmick. Having learned from the headaches of the past, the 3rd party developers started abandoning the Wii U when they learned it wouldn't support DirectX, something that both Xbox 360/One and PS3/4 support. The cost of development just became too high to be worth the risk. Therefore, like they did in the first video with the DS, Nintendo is putting forth a large-scale 1st party development in efforts of regaining the trust of the 3rd party developers. Sony needs to make sure they do the same thing with their next handheld console if they want it to survive.

Foxi, I wasn't trying to say that specs don't matter at all. There's always going to be a curve of minimal technological progress that must be made to remain competitive. I was merely trying to mirror the point of the video that having the best specs tends to hurt more than it helps. I agree that the NES wouldn't survive in today's tech environment. However, having an overpowered system is just as detrimental as an underpowered system.

 

[Foxi4]

Foxi, I wasn't trying to say that specs don't matter at all. There's always going to be a curve of minimal technological progress that must be made to remain competitive. I was merely trying to mirror the point of the video that having the best specs tends to hurt more than it helps. I agree that the NES wouldn't survive in today's tech environment. However, having an overpowered system is just as detrimental as an underpowered system.

Indeed, you have to strike a balance. If you make a kick-ass system, but it's too expensive for anyone to buy it and too complex to develop for (Neo Geo, PS3), you might have a rough start or a mediocre finish. The system has to be both "good" and "affordable" at the same time, among other requirements it has to meet.

 

[GameWinner]

This thread...
Shaking my head...

 

[cracker]

The Neo Geo actually shared the same CPUs as most arcade systems from the early 90s through the 2000s -- Motorola 68K and Zilog Z80A (sound processor) which was also the setup for the Genesis with the exception of it have a slightly different instruction set with a normal Z80. The hardware wouldn't have been the reason why it failed to become widely popular with home users. It was the price of the system and cartridges. On the other hand it was cheap hardware to put into an arcade cabinet which probably subsidized the lack of home sales. I don't think it was marketed to the US like it was in Japan (and Europe?). It was very rare to see an advert or any mention of the home console in mags like EGM or GamePro.

 

[NyaakoXD]

Now I wonder how far this thread will go before it closes...

 

[Drink the Bleach]

Say, wasn't that numbering system including EU and JP roms? So for most games that would be 1 counted 3 times.

1000 roms doesn't mean 1000 unique games, I know that, but the more actual games, the more the rom list should halve. 3 years to get to 1000 is sad. Its actually been almost 3 and a half years and we just broke 1000

 

[zhdarkstar]

1000 roms doesn't mean 1000 unique games, I know that, but the more actual games, the more the rom list should halve. 3 years to get to 1000 is sad. Its actually been almost 3 and a half years and we just broke 1000

Like I said before, mobile gaming took a large chunk out of the handheld gaming market that affected both 3DS and Vita. It's a fool's errand to imagine that the 3DS would have the same rate of game production that the DS had because mobile gaming was still very much a niche market at that time, primarily distributed by the network carriers. There was no Google Play Store or iTunes App Store for the first 3 years of the DS' lifecycle. The silver lining to the chunk mobile gaming took out of the handheld market is that it took a sizable portion of the shovelware with it. As a percentage of the total library, there's actually a lot less shovelware for the 3DS than there was for the DS during the first 3 years.

There's also one difference in the way that the games are split into regions that you have overlooked. The DS library saw a bunch of games that had separate versions for the different countries of Europe, as opposed to the simple NA/EU/JP split. The 4th gen Pokemon and Call of Duty games were some of the biggest offenders with upwards of 6-7 roms of the same game. Much like when comparing economies of different time periods, you have to adjust for inflation when comparing the DS library and the 3DS library.

One thing that is going to help the 3DS library in the long run is that there are a couple of studios who are getting really skilled at working with the 3DS platform. WayForward Games has been putting out tv/movie licensed games that have been worth playing. Their partnership with Cartoon Network has become very reminiscent of the Capcom/Disney partnership during the 3rd and 4th generations of video game consoles, with a lot of attention given to both gameplay and connection to the source material. Regular Show and the 1st Adventure Time game are definite must-plays in my book. Out of the four Cartoon Network games that they have done for 3DS, the only one that I disliked was the 2nd Adventure Time game. They screwed the pooch on that one by cutting out the multiplayer aspect of the game for the 3DS version. The 3DS is by far the most multiplayer friendly of the Nintendo handhelds, so it boggles the mind wondering why such a key feature was left out of that game when the Wii U version uses the same online infrastructure that the 3DS uses.

The one recent 3DS game from WayForward that shocked me in a good way was Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark. It felt like the closest that we're ever going to get to a Super Robot Wars game that isn't tied to the OG lineage. It had a good AI that provided a real challenge and punished reckless abandon. Upgrading via completing the secondary mission objectives instead of the traditional xp model actually made it feel rewarding to find the right strategy to pull off those feats. I'll tell you right now, some of the challenges for the Lockdown missions had very little margin for error in their execution. It's a game that I would definitely recommend to anyone who hasn't played a SRPG before, as it lacks the number crunching and balance grinding of the standard fare for the genre like FF Tactics and Fire Emblem. However, the slimmed-down system doesn't feel watered-down at all, but rather streamlined for efficiency between gameplay and storytelling. As a long-time veteran of the genre, I think the game definitely has an appeal that makes it worth playing through at least once.

 

[Drink the Bleach]

aaaa

Even if one unique game has like 8+ different regions like Pokemon games, the trend of rom# vs released games is still there, and one isn't the cause and effect of the other. A Trend like SD cards, where a good write speed doesn't mean a good read speed, but always the higher the write, the higher the read you get.

 

[Foxi4]

The Neo Geo actually shared the same CPUs as most arcade systems from the early 90s through the 2000s -- Motorola 68K and Zilog Z80A (sound processor) which was also the setup for the Genesis with the exception of it have a slightly different instruction set with a normal Z80. The hardware wouldn't have been the reason why it failed to become widely popular with home users. It was the price of the system and cartridges. On the other hand it was cheap hardware to put into an arcade cabinet which probably subsidized the lack of home sales. I don't think it was marketed to the US like it was in Japan (and Europe?). It was very rare to see an advert or any mention of the home console in mags like EGM or GamePro.

To be exact, the Neo Geo AES was a miniaturized revision of the Neo Geo MVS arcade machine, it actually played original MVS cartridges if you had an adapter. Needless to say, such a setup was quite expensive, but not so much due to the hardware of the console itself, rather the hardware contained in the cartridges.

Your average Mega Drive/Genesis cartridge has memory on it and that's it. The situation with the SNES is similar, although some games have additional chips like the DSP or the SuperFX - those were more expensive. Neo Geo cartridges contained a huge number of mappers as a standard, and often times also additional RAM, which lead the games to cost $100-$200 - that's the price of your average game system. This was not a sustainable model of distribution and as such the system did not reach wide appeal.

Here's an example:

Spoiler: Fatal Fury 3 PCB

Spoiler: Sonic the Hedgehog PCB

I don't think I need to remind anyone how much these components used to cost - there's a lot of good reasons why Neo Geo games were pretty darn expensive.

This kind of a setup was preferable for an arcade machine - the base station could be sold cheaply and anything it needed to run the games would be on the actual cartridge. Not only that, the machine would pay for itself anyways, so the investment in the game returned itself. On a home console, this becomes a liability - users prefer cheap games as they only own one machine.

 

[zhdarkstar]

Even if one unique game has like 8+ different regions like Pokemon games, the trend of rom# vs released games is still there, and one isn't the cause and effect of the other. A Trend like SD cards, where a good write speed doesn't mean a good read speed, but always the higher the write, the higher the read you get.

You still can't deny that the mobile gaming boom has had a significant impact on handheld gaming develpment and production. It effectively became a three party competition with Android and iOS sharing the third spot to represent mobile gaming. The overhead for mobile app development is infinitesimal when compared to the overhead development costs for either the 3DS or Vita. So instead of seeing a bin full of $20 3DS bargain titles, we have app stores flooded with $.99 games looking to make the quick buck. I say good riddance to those junk programmers, as I prefer quality over quantity any day of the week.