I was recently blessed with the opportunity to spend an hour chatting with Tyrone Rodriguez, President of Nicalis (Cave Story+, VVVVVV 3DS). We even recorded the chat, for Dtoid's new live stream talk show and podcast Sup Holmes. During the first episode, I accidentally cut Tyrone off right before he was going to say something really interesting. I am a dick. Luckily, in life you sometimes get do overs. This is one of those times.
Here's what Tyrone has to say about developing for the 3DS eShop in comparison to Nintendo's other forays into online distribution:
The eShop, I feel, has really turned things around for Nintendo on the digital side because the storefront is heavily feature-driven. Any publisher can still produce whatever it wants, similar to iOS in both regards. However, given the feature-oriented nature, the eShop is quasi-curated without being some lame PR line like, 'consciously developing a curated portfolio.' That's a steaming pile of PR right there, but that's another story altogether.
If we look back at WiiWare, that system was broken because it was trying to be fair and feature nothing. WRONG. In the WiiWare system all games were created equal, but life's not fair and all games are NOT made equal. Some suck hard, particularly on WiiWare. However, that doesn't matter much in a system like the WiiWare shop because customers aren’t being directed anywhere. The top 20 is the easiest filter and being on the top 20 doesn’t mean a game is good/great, it just means they sell. Frogger, really?
I'm pretty certain that the number of total downloads (across all games etc) on most platforms typically hovers around the same rough figure. So, say you have 200 total customers to a given service per day, in the case of WiiWare, they're getting lost in an ocean of blah. Other services, like eShop, have systems in place to control what people get to see and, to me, this is ideal.
Since the eShop is heavily feature-driven, this not only helps promote titles, it forces publishers and developers to make better games, hopefully. You want to get featured? You better have something good to show, curated or not. Will this change in the future? I have no idea as I'm not Mr. Iwata, but I do know that compared to how we did on WiiWare and DSiWare, eShop has a much better outlook.
Jonathan Holmes is the most lovable Associate Editor on Destructoid. Catch him on videos, original editorials, and on back episodes of the Destructoid Show and MTV's Road Rules. Jonathan is a retro gamer's gamer.
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Contest:
7:00 AM on 02.07.2012 | 
Hopefully they're starting to learn from their competitors and their own past mistakes. I'd like to see more downloadable offerings from them.
I still think the store is a little bit clunky and esoteric, but I'll be dammed if I don't get excited on Thursdays to see what is new. I had been wondering how my use of the 3DS would fair once I get my Vita, but in these recent months Nintendo's little guy has staked its claim on my gaming mindshare, my heart, and a spot in my daily to go gear.
I said the same thing about WiiWare when it came out. For all we know, Nintendo may get bored of the eShop and re-focus on other things when the Wii-U releases. With Nintendo, we never know if they're going to take a step back or completely abandon something -- that's the way they've been for a long, long time.
Really I have been happy with the eshop until the last two years when there has been no VC releases on the wii.
I feel like the wii U will open more possibilities. However, I still have not gotten confirmation that my downloadable wii games can be transferred to the wii U...
But they have already learned from that. Games like the GameLoft golf game on the eShop, goes up to 250MB right now. So they obviously don't have a 40MB limit on the 3DS, like they had on the Wii, because the 3DS has way more storage space, than the Wii did. So problem already solved!
For the rest of us, we've successfullly downloaded some lovely games in the last few weeks with no problems.
Also, lets not forget the neat little present you get everytime you download something. A neat little detail that other devices dont have.
Nintendo fan apologetics.
I hate that they pretend it's a gift. The audacity they have to pretend that something I purchased is a gift to me is ridiculous.
Equate it to old people. Old people don't take to newer things, thinking they can keep on, keeping on.
Sony and Microsoft are not only companies that are seated in other technologies, but they're both companies that had their video game divisions grow up, so to speak, right a long side the internet. Meanwhile, Nintendo's over on its porch shaking its cane at them.
People seem to forget that while they were first among the big three in the industry, and the longest game maker, that the company is well over a hundred years old and started out simply making playing cards. These leaps they make, to them, aren't small, even if we all seem to think they're the intuitive leaps they should be making to keep up. One of Nintendo's greatest weaknesses is their age.
@Chris Carter
You know, when I got my 3DS at launch I couldn't wait for the eShop simply because we should have had it at launch. Now, every week, I'm glued to either D-toid, my email, or the shop itself waiting on the next release. I never thought going into the 3DS, after not caring one bit about the DSi shop, I'd buy all that much off it, but here I am wishing for more games to buy, because the ones I have taken the leap to buy (I can't remember how many between those and the free games given to us) have been so great and well executed.
That may not say much for Nintendo themselves, but more so about the quality of games that could be made for a system that people would have rather kicked to the curb for the better part of its release year.
Your definitely spot on about their support though. They really need to continue support and not follow their same patterns of forgetting their things exist.
I never really went on Wiiware, but every week I check out the eShop.
Let's be honest a majority of what's on DSiWare is crap. The way the eShop is set up is that anything that's remotely good is almost constantly featured and shovel-ware sinks to the bottom. It feels like the people running the eShop actually play and care about the games on the service.
Nintendo Show 3D is also surprisingly good. They're always highlighting the best stuff on the system and even obscure stuff like catrap. Sure the show still smells like PR, but it seems sincere, and it's promoting good games.