No bashing here. I simply am hoping to hear what reasons there are if any would someone stick with it. I've never owned any 3DS flashcarts, only owned flashcarts for the DS generation since custom firmware wasnt really an option at the time.
The one and only benefit I can think of why people would stay with Gateway is because of its ease of use. I never used a Gateway flashcart but I would imagine its as simple as sticking the 3DS roms into the microSD, into the flashcart and just playing your games right away where someone with just a 3DS has to follow a 30+ min guide on installing arm9loader+Luma3DS to be set up.
The only other reasoning I can think of is the sunk cost theory in which the user insists on sticking with their purchase in order to feel like they gotten their monies worth.
All of my 3DS's and those belonging to my friends have A9LH and Luma, but I and all the people that I hooked up w/ GW's and an entry point back in the day still use theirs (even though I've A9LH/Luma'ed almost all of them). For the "noobs" it's what they know, they fear using the FreeShop and/or some other things I'm sure. For me...
As mentioned the cheat engine is one reason. Just about anyone can at least peek and poke values w/ it, and you don't have to be all that much more clever to create actual codes w/ it either. Plus finding values and editing them on the fly is great. Not every game has codes pre-made for you and not every value you want to manipulate is available as a code for even the games that do have pre-made codes published on "th3 webz".
Another is the increased capacity gained by using a GW for less money (if you already have one of course). I can pretty easily pick up a reliably branded 64GB mSD for around $20 in my town or on-line (I can find one on sale almost every time I need/want to buy one), trusted 128GB cards tend to cost $70 and up on-line and can almost never be sourced locally (for me) for less than $100. So my common situation is $40 for 128GB's and I can get it today, $70 or more and I wait to have it shipped or I take it in the shorts an pay $100 or more and get it today.
Portability between 3DS's by just swapping the cart is a plus (I have 3 of them in my house). Speaking of, own a N3DS? It's a minor inconvenience, but one none the less, to remove the back plate to get to the mSD on one. It's nice to not have to do that or use the 3DS's slow ass WiFi and FTP to install a game I just want to test out or play occasionally. And back to storage, you don't have to have enough space for a CIA file AND enough space to install the game to use it on GW. Drag and drop is great if you're like me...
The FreeShop is great, and maybe so is that ISO site (I'm not a member, I get my warez mostly off of Usenet), but I'm a scene release collector and a bit of a purist. I collect every US release and some exclusive non-US releases... Meaning I've already downloaded and stored just about anything in the 3DS's (or any other platform I own) library that I would want to play... And sadly a bunch of crap I don't like Imagine/Bratz/etc games (I TOLD YOU I'm a collector
). Scene releases for the 3DS are always .3DS files. Even things exclusive to the eShop are released as .3DS files, not .CIA's. W/ a GW I don't have to convert them to CIA's so I can then install them, waste time re-downloading them via FreeShop or other means... Or store two copies of the same software as both so I can avoid the conversion and keep my scene releases as they were released. I keep duplicate copies of patched and original scene released games for things like the GBA and DS as they're much smaller, but not multi-gigabyte software like on the 3DS.
Don't get me wrong I use the Freeshop (mostly for smaller things) and install CIA's, but it's either because the title is small in size or it's something I already know I'm going to play the hell out of and want on my home screen and off my GW. The GW is a battery sucking pig, so if it's my current "main go to" game I've likely installed it to the 3DS proper rather than just using it on my GW. If it's something I just want to test or play occasionally/rarely it goes on my GW for sure.