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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Why so many great DS games sold so poorly?

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Why so many great DS games sold so poorly?

They were overshadowed by more casual titles. 18 33.96%
 
Poor distribution. 2 3.77%
 
Lack of word of mouth or advertisement. 9 16.98%
 
Piracy. 13 24.53%
 
Lack of interest from the userbase. 11 20.75%
 
Total:53
Smear-Gel on 30 June 2015

The reason was piracy. I read that more than half of DS owners pirated games by the end.

Parents would go into stores actually asking for the Flashcarts to pirate games, thinking it was normal.

Games that came near the middle and especially the end got screwed. RIP Chinatown Wars.



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TomaTito on 30 June 2015

It's sad that Days of Ruin will be the last Advance Wars.

pikashoe said:
The huge amount of piracy, I have never seen so much piracy on a console.

DS cards were so easy to use, sometimes even an advantage to actual game cartridges.



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Arlo on 30 June 2015
Stellar_Fungk said:
Arlo said:

I never said they had the same people making up their install bases.  The 3DS released into a different climate with different people.

Ok, then where were these people during the DS era? RPG fans that bought these 3DS games were surley active rpg players during the DS generation. The PSP didn't get good RPG's till 2010ish (like Trails in the Sky, Birth by Sleep) so the DS had the majority of great RPGs in the beginning to mid and therefore themajority of RPG players.

The Dragon Quest games, Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger sold well on the DS after all. I think it's more about piracy and lack of marketing.

A lot of them were too young to appreciate such games, or to have disposable income.  A lot of them didn't know about all these games because of how many games there were, whereas the 3DS has a smaller but very strong library.  It's definitely also about piracy and marketing, but the demographic changes along with the industry.



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arcane_chaos on 30 June 2015
Edwardooo said:
Because they were too many DS games.
And too much piracy.


basically this, pirating on the DS was so easy all you needed, was a; specail rom cartridge(which were SUPER EASY to come by) an micro SD card, and a file extractor program on you computer and you were set. and te DS was a casual friendly console appeal as well, which lead to a HUGE amount of shovelware drowning out anything that was good

 

still hoping those Golden Sun: Darn Dawn won't deter them from making a 4th entry



S.Peelman on 30 June 2015

To be fair though half those DS games miss a significant amount if not all European sales. Not that it changes much, but at least reality is better than what VGC proposes. VGC also has total software sales like 150m under Nintendo's official number, though I don't know if Nintendo includes DSiware.

Anyway yeah it's due to piracy mostly. DS was the easiest to pirate system since the Dreamcast. Even I had pirated games, though I eventually bought the ones I really played often because my appreciation for gaming got rekindled.



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jonathanalis on 30 June 2015

seems that 3DS audience is more 'core' than DSs, despite it has sold 1/3.



sc94597 on 30 June 2015
jonathanalis said:
seems that 3DS audience is more 'core' than DSs, despite it has sold 1/3.

Rather than "more core" I'd say "less casual." The DS likely had as many core players as the 3DS, it's just the case that the 3DS doesn't have the DS's casuals.



Vor on 30 June 2015
pikashoe said:
The huge amount of piracy, I have never seen so much piracy on a console.


IMO PS2 has more amount of piracy.



A handheld gamer only (for now).

QUAKECore89 on 30 June 2015

Blame piracy.



hansrob00 on 30 June 2015

fortunate thing is that developing for the ds is probably cheap as shit, and they were selling them for $40 a pop, so you don't have to sell millions to turn a profit.