The 3DS is an excellent example of hardware I barely care for at all being made utterly necessary by top-notch content.
And do you know why? Okay, a lot of it has to do with the Japanese market... but the 3DS is also just about the only platform around that can support mid-budget games. Home consoles can support indie downloadable games or $10M shooters and action/adventures, and everybody else can take off. Mobile platforms are only just starting to get used to the idea of mid-budget games. PCs will actually support pretty much whatever budget you've got, but you're still stuck gaming on a PC.
3DS games occupy a happy place where you have enough money to offer solid production values and a polished experience, but not so much money that a suit asks, "How can we make this appeal more to the Call of Duty gamer?"
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
