3DS Gaming

OoT has masterquest as well which I've never played so that will be a welcome addition.

I'd love to see the GBA catalogue become available. I never played the Oracles games or Minish Cap, so I'd like to see them on there. Also missed out on Golden Sun 2, and I haven't played a hand held metroid game since the first on the phat gameboy.

 

Masterquest is basically a changed up more hardcore version of OoT right? Not bad value then considering. At least it gives you a new play through option that will be more challenging/feature some variations rather than just making the bosses harder etc.

Does anyone know if UK games and or packaging look any different to local?

 

How long did you play GR for? Which missions? You're the only person I know who didn't like it.

 

The DSE guy was showing me alternative games after I asked for a refund, so not too long

It's not that I didn't like it, I just don't think it was worth $70, or that it's better than DS titles I can play. I couldn't wait though, I needed to see what the 3DS was like and I didn't want to buy a normal DS in the mean time.

 

Agreed, I don't think any 3DS game is worth $70.

EB Games were selling GR for $38 when I bought it.

 

My copy of pilot wings arrived a few days ago, pretty good game on the 3ds... just the way I remember it from the n64 days.

 

Yeah agreed. I'd pay $49.95 locally but no higher. Quite possibly just EB having a rort of the market like usual. I wish they had Lego Star Wars for $38 with console purchase, gonna ask when I pick my 3DS up next week if they can give me any discount on it as its the only game atm that I want to try.

 

JB have a sale on all games, 20% off. Should include 3DS games.

 

I will check it out a little later and see if it does.

EDIT: Just checked their website and it does. 20% off until Sunday.

 

More Zelda info:

Preview from Destructoid

 

Nice one! Thx for the tip, I might pick up Pilotwings Resort.

 

I might also if the price is right. Hoping to pick up SSF4 this weekend.

Edit: Ecogamer says Pilot wings is currently $47.20 at jb. They have preowned 3DS games there now from $38. Probably just the Ubisoft ones that were often bundled like Ghost Recon, rayman, rabbids.

Apparently fishpond were, probably by mistake, doing 3DS for $156 :| Some folk on ecogamer say their order status has changed to shipped, will be interesting to see if they get them. Their cards have been charged.

 

Zelda is sounding good!

I went into JB today and they didn't have Star Wars Mostly just the titles EB are bundling for $38. Not really interested in any of the other games and trade in is going to suck on all the bundled games. At the moment the likes of Zelda, Advanced Wars, Harvest Moon and Mario games are topping my list for this year. I would also like a decent RPG or more adventure games but I feel that we won't see that many titles worth buying this year.

Just out of interest does anyone know how hard it is to develop games for the 3DS? With the consoles you always hear that it is hard to optimise games for the PS3's multicore architecture, sounds more like its hard to port a pc/core version to the PS3 compared to the 360. The 3DS could be a great opportunity for smaller studio's to get a few games out and focus on the gameplay/fun/art style rather than having to try to keep up with all the big studio's graphics. I am also very interested to see what happens with the 3DS download centre and if they will be selling any indie titles etc on there. DS market share alone shows that the 3DS should have a very big audience over the years and as I would think development costs should be significantly less than PC/PS3/360 it opens the playing field up a lot.

 

Ended up taking my refund money to JB, Ghost Recon was cheap enough with 20% off so I picked it up, it was between that and Spirit Tracks.

 

Let me know your impression, for $38 when I pick up my 3DS next week it is the only one of the line up other than Lego Star Wars.

 

Well apparently it costs 2-3x as much to develop a game for 3DS compared to DS, and game budgets will be just under Wii games.

3DS is dual core, but I'm pretty sure developers should be pretty used to this by now after years with the multicore Xbox 360, PS3 and PCs. It also has a ton of RAM, 128 megabytes in total, 96 which are supposed to be available to game developers (the rest for OS), this compares with 88MB in the Wii, 16MB in the DSi and 4MB in the DS.

 

I'm still really enjoying Ghost Recon and I'm near the end of the game now. It's like a faster paced but more tactical version of Advance Wars.

 

If its anything like Advanced Wars I may pick it up as I quite like Advanced Wars. After all its only $38 so not too bad.

Also just FYI the 20% of all games at JB only applies in store :/ Might be an issue if they are out of stock of what you are after. Going in tomorrow to see if they will have any copies of Lego Star Wars in before the sale is over.

That article suggests games reaching $1mil dev cost, doesn't seem THAT much. Many console/pc titles are running dev costs of tens of million. Yes maybe its a lot to develop Barbie Dress Up which sells minimal units but for a decent game costs could be recouped fairly quickly I imagine. How much profit is made on 3DS games? I'm guessing Nintendo take their cut and or manufacture the carts. $1 mil dev costs seems to only accomidate around 10-14 staff + office space + computers + etc for a year. If they do allow a 3DS download store at least small dev's can get there stuff out there without needing to be a full developer with large funding.

Games are $40-50 USD it appears, retailer mark up would account for I'm guessing $10-18 of this leaving you with a wholesale price range of $22-40. Any idea on manufacturing cost/nintendo licencing fee's/distribution? Making $20 a unit means on a dev cost of $1mil you need to ship 50,000 units which doesn't seem that big a feat if you make a decent game considering there have already been 1mil + 3DS sold and expectations are of at least several more by the end of the year and expected to break 100 million units over its life. Currently you need less than 5% of the 3DS market to buy a game to break even not accounting for future sales etc. By the end of next year you are looking at only needing to sell to 1-2% of the 3DS market to break even/make profit if those development costs are accurate.

 

Going to suss out the 3DS today, is JB Hifi the cheapest with $339 for the 3DS and accessory pack?

 

Probably old news, but I just saw the trailer for the Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright mashup. Here's hoping it's released outside of Japan!