I think I am the only one understanding Nintendos digital approach on 3DS.
With the recent outrages about Nintendo's approach to Digital Distribution, I think I should point out what I assume is their reasoning behind all this.
1) Nintendo sees digital downloads the same way as a physical cartridge.
You buy one, you only have one. You can not split it in two and play it on two machines at the same time. If you lose it, it is gone (it always baffles me when people say that they won't go digital because of fear of losing their stuff, if the cartridge is gone you lose the game the same way).
which leads to
2) They need to keep things simple and as "offline" as possible.
Nintendos main platform is their handheld-device, that's where they sell most and make the most revenue. BUT: Portable consoles are a lot less online than their home-counterparts, simply because many people don't have internet when they leave their house.
Which brings the problem of DRM to the table.
Sony allows digital games to be played on 2 home-devices and 2 portable devices, which especially in the case of the PSP/PSV might actually mark a loss for them, because one copy of the game could satisfy the needs of two users without any negative effects. Their reasoning is most likely that they rather lose one software-sale and hope to bolster their userbase, which is viable strategy in a market where you're not the leader.
Microsoft doesn't have a portable console. They actually only allow one (!) console to play digital games without an internet connection and if you want to to change which console is offline-capable you have to go through a special process on the site (which you can only do once per year I remember?). Although their case is rather irrelevant to Nintendo, since it's a home-console, so if you have online-connectivity to download games it is very likely you have online further down the road.
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Just imagine there is an account-system for the 3DS, you buy 15 games, your friend comes over and wants you to copy your games, you log into your account on his device, download the games, it is all his to play, like new. Nintendo has no way to deactivate the games from your/his 3DS without forcing online-verification (which everbody would hate to see on the next Xbox, a system most of you would keep online all the time anyway)
People need to remember two very important key-points in this discussion:
- Don't bring home-console guidelines to a portable gaming system!
- You cannot spell "Account-system" without some sort of "Online-Authentication". And currently "Online-Authentication" doesn't properly mix with "Portable console" (yet).
