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Third-Party Games Will Be Available As 3DS Downloads This Year

Nintendo previously confirmed that third-party Nintendo 3DS retail games will also be available to download from the Nintendo eShop, but gave no specific details. Reggie Fils-Aime recently announced which retail games – both first-party and third-party – will be available as digital titles this year. The third-party games that will also be digitally released are Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, Scribblenauts Unlimited, and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate.

“We’ve got a massive list of AAA content on the way from all of the biggest names in gaming,” Fils-Aime said, “that are all proven franchises, all exclusive to our platform, and all coming to stores both in physical and digital formats in the second half of 2012.” Accompanying this statement is a slide featuring confirmed eShop/retail releases New Super Mario Bros. 2, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, and Paper Mario: Sticker Star, along with third-party games Kingdom Hearts 3D, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate,Scribblenauts Unlimited, and Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion.

41 thoughts on “Third-Party Games Will Be Available As 3DS Downloads This Year”

    1. Yes, there is. Once you download that, you will always have that game and will be able to move it to other systems. It cannot be physically damaged, stolen or lost. Also, it means you can access it at any time, without having to have that individual cartridge. The only downside to it is that you can’t necessarily sell that individual game in a store, for instance.

          1. Here my country have no Club Nintendo so we cannot link and we cannot register games and cannot have prizes… :(

            1. You could’ve linked to another store and country. My 3DS is european and my Wii is north american, so I have a Club Nintendo account for each.

          2. Explain more please,I really need to know this.
            (/* o*)/*
            (This is me giving you internet points.)

        1. I’ve never had a game damaged, stolen, or lost, so those are all moot points in my opinion. So what if you can move it to other systems, I can move my cartridge to another system. I can also let friends borrow it if I want. You can’t do that with a download version. Gonna need more than just those reasons if theres no price change.

          1. True. I think the value of a physical cartridge and it’s box it’s better for the fan because, for example, I’ve got all mi Wii, DS, 3DS and etc games in a shelf as a collection and as decoration.
            My way of thinking right now it’s to buy physical cartridges as always for the games I want the most (for example in the games mentioned, Castlevania LoS:MoF) and I see the downloadable games as games I’m not sure to buy but maybe I’ll give them a try (EX: Epic Mickek: CoI)

    2. yes there is, there’s a high possibility that you will lose your cartridge, and the 3DS is a handheld, so if you don’t want to take over 5 cartridges with you every time you go outside then just download the game to your SD card

      1. Again never lost a cartridge, if you have that problem then you should probably pay more attention to your stuff. I always carry multiple cartridges with me. This is a necessity so that I can loan out games for use at my Streetpass events.

      2. If that’s a problem for you then just go get a 3DS case. I have one that can carry twelve games and has a little loop at the top. I attach a key clip and attach the case to my pants. Never lost a game.

      1. That looks delicious peefrct for a football watching day. I love hot queso dip for football games. The only problem is that I always end up eating WAY too much by the time the game is over. Lyndsie @ highcottonlivin recently posted..

    3. Yeah, I agree. I might buy something more casual digitally, because it makes sense to. If Tetris was re-released in a digital format, I’d buy it. But unless it’s cheaper, I’m not buying it digitally.

      I probably won’t even if it’s cheaper but something like Epic Mickey, I might since I’m not sure I’d be into the game to begin with. So if I can get it for a lower price, I’d be more likely to buy it.

      1. I agree completely! The price will be the factor to determine if we’ll buy them or not. It would be completely non-sense if digital versions are priced exactly the same as the retail versions.
        They don’t have to pay for a lot of stuff like the box itself, the paper, the distribution locally or to the world, even some kind of agreement with retailers, etc, etc…

        So I wish the digital games are much more economical… If not, I won’t buy them. And as @T.j. Ritter said, I often lend my games to my girlfriend, for example, which I can’t accomplish with a digital distribution………..

    4. that will not be cheap at the begin, maybe at the few months post lauch(as a way to avoid the retail suffer, mostly because Nintendo have Multi-Millon Contracts and Deals with a lot of Retailer), so expect like 30$(taking away the cost of the Card) at beggining and them maybe price-drop… but knowing Nintendo they will wash their hand saying that Third-Party have complete freedom about the price in the eShop( i can see Capcom and Namco-Bandai Overcharging their games…AGAIN)

      So sorry if bad news… the price will be similar to retailr for a while

  1. I’ve upgraded to a 32GB SD Card especially for this, all you need to do is simply copy and paste the data from your current SD Card. Don’t worry about DRM, that only occurs when it is in the 3DS console.

    1. The Only Pokemon Champ

      Ive been looking for a 32 gig SD card as well
      So this is off topic
      But whats the best SD card for the 3ds?
      I currently use a 4 gig Sandisk(which is almost finished) SDHC
      And I wanna upgrade to 32
      that stuff is expensive
      so I wanted to know what is the best affordable SD card for playing extremely huge download games?
      also whats DRM?

      1. Firstly: DRM is Digital Rights Management, it’s copy-protection.

        32GB is the largest size the 3DS supports. If you’re thinking of getting a lot of downloads, I certainly recommend the 32GB Card, it may be expensive, but you most likely won’t need another card for it. If you’re in the UK, Amazon has 32GB Sandisk cards reduced from £95 to £12 currently. Likewise, Amazon US has them reduced from $49 to $21. You can use it on the Wii and the Wii U too. Amazon US also has a 16GB card available for $12, but considering it’s only $9 more it’s certainly worth it.

  2. OK Capcom, afraid that monster hunter 3g doesn’t hit in the west? Release it as a download only option and then you’ll see that it will sell like crazy. After that you will be always sure to release future MH games in the west at the same time than in Japan.

  3. Y’know call me old fashioned but I’d rather just buy physical copies at a store. That way I don’t have to worry so much about this stuff eating up memory on my SD Card.

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  5. looks like 2012 is going to be a great year for 3ds. while 2013 is going to be a great year for wiiu, I bet.

  6. i would love the download game becasue some times mine stuff gets stollen or my lil bro just let some one borrow it with out asking me first so this is a good chance 2 get them 4 example like if i get paper mario sticker star and my lil bro lost it then it would be better if you get it as a download ya know

  7. Well as for me, I don’t want to buy a huge SD just for that, and I like staring at boxes/manuals and using them as art references and lugging them around everywhere I go lol /shot. But I can see why some people would want a digital copy! It seems more convenient if you don’t have weird peeves like me…XD Especially since it takes up no real space so you can never fill up a shelf with games and run out of space or something.

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