Report: 3DS to allow full game installs

via Eurogamer


The Nintendo 3DS will allow users to copy games to internal memory according to a report in Japanese newspaper Nikkei, translated by Andriasang.

The software install feature will allow 3DS owners to store multiple games on memory rather than having to carry around a lot of cartridges.

Nintendo has come under pressure from third parties to do something about rampant DS piracy.

Yesterday Activision COO Thomas Tippl told GameSpot: "if they also address the piracy issues they have and upgrade the copyright protection system, I think [3DS is] going to be a big success"

Given that a lot of the piracy devices are cartridges that store multiple ROMs on micro-SD cards, perhaps Nintendo has decided that if you can't beat them...


Sounds like a good idea. What do you think? Leave feedback via comments.

There is no way this is going to work smoothly.

It should just be as simple as inserting the cart and copying to system flash, but Nintendo isn't going to make it that easy, from fears of cart-sharing and rent-and-rip.

Yes but it could flash the original cartridge so you can copy it to an SD card only once and not allow it again. Or perhaps it will stamp the cartridge with a digital stamp with the serial number of your 3DS so you can't copy it again or even use the cartridge on another 3DS at all. This would stop the sale of used cartridges and rentals of them. The only problem there would be that if your 3DS broke would nintendo or its third parties allow you to send in your cartridges to be reset so you could reflash or download the games again? I don't have an answer but in all reality they may not even sell the 3DS games on a cartridge. You would just buy an empty case with a voucher to download the game or buy it in their app store. Then it would do a custom copy protected download only for your 3DS and the game would not run on another 3DS. The up side to storing your games on an SD card, even if you can only play them on one 3DS would be that you could back them up in case the SD card went bad. As far as playing games internally without an SD card, my question is how big are the 3D games and how much flash memory does this 3DS have?

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my question is how big are the 3D games and how much flash memory does this 3DS have?

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Games are up to two GB, internal flash should be maybe 4-8GB?

Hell, it could be that they don't even really care about rent & rip and sharing. DS game rentals never really got off the ground, a circle of friends sharing games results in far more direct sales than someone dumping a cart and posting a torrent, and games will end up being deleted eventually anyway if the storage is skimpy enough.
If installs end up 'expiring' after a fixed amount of time (like, say, a week), it could even be a clever 'demo' mechanism that may boost sales.

as Qmark said a system like you have to reinsert the original cart every week or something could work. Only I'm sure pirate will be able to patch that eventually. We will see....