kitler53 said:
jarrod said:
kitler53 said:
e-books are small download size in comparison though. i just checked the rates of ATT and they charge $10 per GB. offhand, i think i remember that the 3DS carts will go up to 1.5 GB which means the delivery cost could be up to $15.
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3DS cards have a maximum of 2GB at launch, but that will likely go up. For comparison, DS cards had a maximum capacity of 128MB at launch, and now we have 512MB cards being used for commercial games.
Also, while others have mentioned offloading the costs associated with physical goods (manufacturing, distribution, retail) to the service provider, an additional pricing solution I could see would be adding a tiered system to the platform itself (similar to iPhone), meaning maybe 3DS would come at two pricepoints with 2 levels of functionality (say vanilla for $199, and 3G ready at $299, meaning the cost of the network is also figured into that extra $100 increase Kindle-style).
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well even bigger games means even more cost. $100 increase won't make up for the 3G if we're talking $20 per game in delivery cost. not to mention that downloaing 2Gb on a 3G would take forever. i know apple caps the size an application can be to download over 3G (otherwise you need wifi) but i'm not aware of what that size limit is. i know that whatever that size is it can still take quite a while to download though and it is no were near 2Gb.
i'm going with mr khan on this one - if there is 3G its going to be something smaller in scope like tweets and such.
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I don't expect 3DSWare or Virtual Console Express or whatever games you can download on 3DS to be equivalent to the full retail games though (unlike the current UMD/PSN model for PSP). Like with DSi, I'd expect a specific download service with it's own titles, and likely with lower ceilings on titles and maybe even further caps over what you could download on 3G. Apple's 3G cap is 10MB for downloads btw (which is way too low imo, most podcasts are even bigger) though you can stream content of any size on iPhone OS. The current ceiling on DSiWare games is 45MB (same for WiiWare actually).
Also, if Nintendo were to set up such a service and make deals with providers, you can be sure they'd not be paying the consumer level $10/GB pricepoint. The 3G model price hike would be a supplemental cost factor, AT&T or whoever would also likely take a small cut of each paid download.
