Why people want to buy R5 ?
10 games limitation?
It was speculated for a while what the “10 games limitation” meant on these cartridges. It means exactly what their FAQ is saying: the Sky3DS and the R5SDHC will let you use 10 games, not one more. If you want to play an 11th game, you can’t delete a game from your Micro SD and replace it with a new one. Instead, you’ll have to buy another R5 cartridge, to support 10 more games. This is because somehow the R5 keeps track of how many games you have used with it, and has a hardcoded stop at “10”. This is not a limitation of the hack or the hardware, but an intentional limit put in place to make people buy more of the R5. It also makes it difficult to resell the device on the second-hand market.
I’ve mentioned that the device can currently be found for about $110 on retailer websites (not including shipping). This means you literally pay an average of $11 per game you pirate backup with this device. At this price point, this makes the device slightly unattractive. A
majority of 3DS games can be purchased for less than $25, and a
significant amount can be found today, used, for less than $11. The choice will be up to gamers, if they are willing to give $11 per game to pirates, or $25 to the actual game creators. I think my opinion on this subject is pretty clear.
With all the above being said, some people have found ways to bypass the 10 roms limitation, and actually install up to 100 Roms on the R5 (provided you have a big enough Micro SD). The R5 official site has admitted the bug, confirming the steps to add up to 100 roms on their device. They also mentioned the next batch of devices will probably not have this flaw. A smart marketing move, that will probably guarantee people will rush to buy the R5 rather than its competitors. From a pure pricing point of view, a 100 Roms limitation makes the device much more viable, pricing piracy at $1.1 per game, the cost of a casual game on itunes. Too bad for 3DS developers, good for pirates.
I have not confirmed the glitch that lets people play more than 10 roms. I didn’t even have access to that many roms during my tests.
