P
Digital
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Cons:
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No case, nor manuals nor club Nintendo code
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I'm quite certain there is a digital manual for the digital versions, and if your system is linked to your Club Nintendo account, then it automatically registers any game you buy off the eShop just as if you registered the code.
if games were actually cheaper digital... and they used a license attached to an account instead of a device... i would prefer digital, right now it's physical for me...
though i'll be abroad for a while, so maybe i'll have to get digital copies for that time because of the region lock
I will say that I prefer digital copies and licenses for games, given they are managed correctly.
Unfortunately, Nintendo does not manage them correctly. Linking them to a console is a silly move. Linking to an online account would have been much better, and would cause me to invest more in digital.
Digital copies don't seem to go on sale as often as physical copies as well, and game saves (as far as I know) aren't interchangeable between the two.
I think with a portable console like the 3DS, digital is much better, because portability is key. No accidentally losing game carts when having to switch between two.
See my second most recent post.
i'm pretty sure that's not how linking to club nintendo works... i believe it's just for the rewards, not the redownload of games in a new console
Good luck finding manuals that aren't in black and white or just a large sheet of paper with the basic infos
These past few answers, especially Vipera's, are really excellent. I just want to clear up a couple of things. Firstly, there's a misconception of "lose your console/sd card, lose your games." This isn't really the case. If you have your 3DS signed in to Club Nintendo (which you should, it's a great rewards system), then all of your games, past, present, and future, are stored in the cloud. Assuming you've lost your console, you can easily redownload them. If you've lost your SD card only, you can just redownload them, you don't even have to be signed in to Club Nintendo.