Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Nintendo, why do you seem to hate your fans so much?

Adam Rosenberg
By

New Nintendo 3DS XL
Dear Nintendo,

I’m writing to you as a longtime fan. I could go on here for thousands of words about my elementary-school wanderings with Super Mario Bros. and Tetris, or the many nights spent in heated matches of Mario Kart and GoldenEye. Let’s be honest, though. You know me. You’ve heard these stories before. We may not be personal acquaintances, but you’re no stranger to the enduring appreciation for your beloved stable of characters that your fans possess.

Why, then, do you seem to hate us so much?

Nintendo DS XL packagingThe New Nintendo 3DS has some really fantastic things going on. Face-tracking enhances the system’s glasses-free 3D to the point that it actually works now. New buttons give players and developers both more tools to enjoy their games with. And a faster processor smooths everything out, eliminating the drag of sorting through the dashboard’s cumbersome interface.

But a number of design decisions don’t make sense for customers, fans and first-timers alike.

First of all, what’s up with that power cable? You’re not including one in the box. Fair enough. You expect that most New 3DS purchases will be upgrades. That’s not an opinion; it’s something you’ve confirmed pretty explicitly:

New Nintendo 3DS XL uses the same AC adapter as any Nintendo 3DS or Nintendo DSi system. Rather than raise cost of New Nintendo 3DS XL by charging consumers for a component they may already own, we are giving them the option to only buy if they need an AC adapter.

That’s what you told IGN. But there’s a big flaw in that line of thinking: Most anyone intending to upgrade to a New 3DS is probably going to offset the cost by trading in their old handheld. Problem is, that plan doesn’t work if you don’t have the AC adapter to trade in with your own handheld.

That’s quite a damned if you do/damned if you don’t situation you’ve created. Fans either pass on trading in their old handheld so they can keep their power adapter, or do the trade-in and buy an adapter separately. And first-time buyers have to spend money on top of their $200 purchase just to power the thing on. And it uses a proprietary connector, so it’s not like someone can charge using any old micro USB cable.

That’s not all, though. Your current 3DS uses SD cards, but the New uses Micro SD. Why on Earth would you do that? It’s great that the New 3DS is bundled with a 4GB card, but that’s not nearly enough for many gamers. I’ve got a 32GB card in my own 3DS. And now I have to buy another card, a different card type of the same size, just to keep all my games and saves.

Can’t you see how that might be a thumb in the eye of your fans? You treat the New 3DS as an upgrade proposition, but you’re telling those same fans — really, the biggest of them, the ones that have enough downloaded content to absolutely require more than 4GB of storage — that they have to spend even more money on day one just to upgrade. Just like the power adapter, that’s another unavoidable extra purchase.

Longtime fans and first-time buyers will both have to wrestle with the New 3DS’ shortcomings.

We haven’t even gotten to the rotten cherry that sits on top of all of this: To actually swap out the Micro SD card on a New 3DS, you have to pop off the back plate after removing two small screws that require a non-standard-sized Phillips head screwdriver. It’s the sort of thing that most people don’t tend to have unless they tinker with computers and other electronics. If you’ve got one, awesome. No sweat to pop the back off and slide a new MicroSD in. If you don’t? There’s another day-one purchase.

Now of course this won’t apply to everyone. Some people have precision screwdrivers and spare Micro SD cards lying around. Others have lots of disposable income, or little need for extra storage space. Some even keep all their old hardware, rendering the issue of losing the power adapter from a trade-in moot. But I’d wager that’s a much smaller number, relatively speaking, compared to the longtime fans and first-time buyers both who will wrestle with these shortcomings.

Here’s where I circle back to my original question: Nintendo, why do you seem to hate your fans so much? Why have you made such flagrantly anti-consumer choices for the New 3DS retail release? You’ve got a genuine fan asking here. I am excited, really, truly excited, to play with the New 3DS, to shift all of my Nintendo handheld gaming to that system. But you’ve stacked up so many boneheaded backward steps that create more problems than they solve, I don’t know what to think. Why should I even bother? Why should any of us?

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Adam Rosenberg
Adam Rosenberg
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…
iOS 16 lets you pair Nintendo Switch controllers to your iPhone
Nintendo Switch Joy Con Controllers

Apple forgot to mention one important detail about iOS 16 at its annual WWDC conference yesterday: iPhone users will be able to play games with their Nintendo Switch Pro and Joy-Con controllers.

iOS 16 won't be released to everyone's iPhones until fall, but it is currently out as a developer preview, giving devs ample opportunities to test out and discover some of the new operating system's quirks and exploits. Riley Testut, the developer behind the Delta emulator and AltStore, shared his discovery of iOS 16 natively supporting the Nintendo Switch Pro and Joy-Con controllers, although they show up as a single device. He reported that "they work perfectly with Delta," which emulates games from SNES, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance.

Read more
Nintendo’s eShop closures are a necessary, but messy move
A Nintendo Wii U gamepad flat on a table.

Nintendo last week announced its intentions to shut down the Wii U and 3DS eShops, the systems' digital storefronts, in March 2023. This decision was disappointing for hardcore fans who stuck with Nintendo during that rocky era and extremely worrying as many of the games available on the platforms won't be preserved.
More significant Wii U games and a handful of 3DS titles were ported to Switch, but many titles are still stuck on those systems and can’t be ported. Once the digital storefront shutdowns, digital-only titles will be gone forever, and physical copies of these titles will get more expensive and harder to experience. Fans and game preservationists have not been pleased by this decision, with the Video Game History Foundation giving the most candid response.
https://twitter.com/GameHistoryOrg/status/1494398068346654720
Following this announcement, Digital Trends spoke to an industry analyst and game preservationists to get a better idea of what exactly caused Nintendo to shut down these stores and to learn how it could do a better job at preserving its legacy.
Why is Nintendo shutting down the 3DS and Wii eShops?
Officially, Nintendo’s FAQ on the eShop closures says “this is part of the natural life cycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time." The answer doesn’t get into specifics and might confuse those still playing games on the system or fans of games only available on Wii U or 3DS. Omdia Principal Analyst Matthew Bailey explains Nintendo’s user base argument in more detail, highlighting the massive gap between the number of people playing the Switch as opposed to the Wii U.
“While Omdia expects the number of Switch consoles in active use to exceed 90 million on a global basis this year, the Wii U’s global active installed base will drop under one million in 2022,” he explains. “Even when you include the more enduring 3DS family of consoles into the equation, the Switch still comfortably accounts for over 90% of Nintendo’s total active console install base.”
If one is going off just the numbers, it’s sensible that Nintendo would want to focus on the majority of its players. Bailey admits that “Switch users are already reaping the benefits of Nintendo’s singular first-party development focus on one platform.” Still, one might argue that Nintendo should just let the eShops remain up even if it isn’t actively updating or maintaining them.

Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn’t see that as possible due to cost and security issues. Game Over Thrity, a Twitter user with over 20 years of experience working on IT projects and infrastructure, shed some light on what might have influenced Nintendo’s decision-making in a thread.
“As these systems age, they require patches, security, special contracts, updates, and personnel that know how they were built (and maintained),” his Twitter thread explains. “As time goes on, there are security holes, servers, code, infrastructure, etc., that can’t be brought up to modern standards. It becomes a constant struggle between maintaining legacy systems, paying people to do so, and trying to keep up with global regulations. It’s not cheap by any means. They can’t just ‘leave the lights on’ and stop supporting them. What if someone hacked the payment processor?”
With every passing year, the Wii U and 3DS eShops likely became more expensive to maintain and an increased security risk for the video game publisher. Instead of investing the time and resources into pleasing a smaller amount of players, the easier option is to turn everything off entirely. While he isn’t affiliated with Nintendo, Game Over Thirty’s assessment aligns with what we’ve heard from Nintendo and Omdia.
"The Wii U’s global active installed base will drop under one million in 2022."

Read more
Nintendo is ending Wii U and 3DS eShop service
nintendo shuts down wiiu 3ds eshop

Nintendo has announced the end of its eShop service for the Wii U console and 3DS handheld. The eShop will stay live on those devices until late March 2023, after which players will no longer be able to purchase games or download eShop apps and services for those devices.

After the closure, players will still be able to redownload games and DLC that they already own, use online play, and download software updates.

Read more