Just bought a 3DS for the Sega 3D Classics, Nintendo e-shop is absolutely horrible
I know it's been said by hundreds of people but I guess it's one of those things you have to experience firsthand to truly appreciate it's awfulness.
Over the weekend I picked up a 3DS XL for the up-and-coming releases of the Sega 3D Classics series of digital releases. Up until now I had zero interest in the 3DS and no experience with any of Nintendo's e-shops. I had always read about how awful the layout was, how shitty the DRM was, and how Nintendo was basically clueless about their online infrastructure. Man, how right they are.
The e-shop layout is a cluttered mess. There's only about a dozen demo's available, and all of them have friggin' useage limits!?! The Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed 3D demo can only be played 15 times... what type of idiot thought that would be a good idea? Of the few demos I downloaded all of them either had a 15 or 30 time maximum on how many times you could play it. Granted I don't see myself playing a demo of a game 30 times but that is still a mind-boggling limit to implement.
I didn't see any point of buying a digital release over a physical one. Virtual Console offerings were waaayy overpriced IMO. The 3D Classics line, which was the entire point of my purchase, was equally overpriced for the games that were on there. $6 for 3D Urban Champion? Give me a break. I know the Sega releases are going to be at the same price point but I can swallow that a bit better being that they're going to be arcade & 16-bit games (visually better than launch Famicom titles) and games that I really enjoy in their original versions anyway.
The DRM takes the cake though. You don't have an account on the e-shop. Your purchases are basically tied to that machine for forever. For instance, I got my 3DS used. Even though I completely wiped out the internal memory to it's original factory state I was able to log on to the e-shop and redownload everything the original owner had bought, all for free. From what I gather you can transfer your stuff to another console but it's a long and convoluted process that is cumbersome, time consuming, and irreversible.
I just hope Sega doesn't shit the bed on this whole ordeal and releases all the titles they've announced. I could probably justify owning a 3DS because of them and the handful of Sega retail releases.