The 3DS eShop will not be ready in time for the 3DS launch but, according to Nintendo’s Hideki Konno in an interview with Gamasutra, this is to make the shop an improvement over those associated with previous Nintendo consoles: “We definitely want to make sure that it’s ready before we bring it out. The iterations that we’ve had before — for Wii and DS — to be honest, we just haven’t been as satisfied as we would like.” He continued “It’s browser-based, and to be honest, the ease of use wasn’t what we wanted, and I don’t think that anyone has been pleased with the user response. And I don’t think that people have been using it as often as we want. And being able to, again, easily go into it, look around and purchase things. Again, it just didn’t work out quite as we were hoping.”
Konno went on to discuss how the wii shop was divided up into separate channels and how that “didn’t work really all that well, either.” He went back the 3DS eShop stating “Nintendo 3DS, we really want to cover that all in one spot and cover it from all sides. And so we’re really taking the right amount of time to make sure that it’s right…we’re taking more time because we want to be able to create a system where a consumer sees a promotion and says, ‘Wow, that looks great!’ Sees a game demo, game trailer, whatever it is, and says, ‘I want that!’ And the ability to then say ‘Now I can purchase it right here without having to back out and go somewhere else’ — we want to provide that experience. So that’s one other reason why we’re not bringing it out with the system itself.”
