yeah i would say getting a hardmod installed would be better than buying a new card, (and cheaper), then you know no matter what you can always play future releases, even if all flashcards are blocked (unlikely but you never know right) and you need to go legit, you wouldn't have to choose between staying on a old FW for your flashcard and playing newer gamesim sorry that it happened that, but if you can make the hardmod you can use the old 3ds and the new 3ds with gateway, even if ppl suggest sky3ds its cheaper to do the hard mod and you have a bullet proof vest on the 3ds to updates, you could even update and downgrade at will,