Gaming The GameTicket system (not real, just a concept)

[davidsl_128]

It'd be nice to be able to store games on the 3DS. Although it's pretty unlikely, because Nintendo wouldn't allow us to install games to prevent people from buying one cart and installing the game on many 3DS's. I came up with an idea to fix that...

Here's the deal: Nintendo doesn't want us to buy one copy of a game and have two or more working copies of the game (the cartridge copy and the one in our system). But what if only one could work at the same time? This system would allow gamers to copy their games to their 3DS and buy games from the internet (like the PSP Go)! Read on for a mock-up explanation of this system in a mock-up article (it's kinda long, so go get some soda if you want to. Or a beer)

EDIT: I came up with a better, faster, and stronger shorter idea, so now I have two ideas yay

Idea 1 - Nintendo Transfer Kiosks

So basically, you can buy a game on retail in a cartridge, or buy the game on the 3DS Shop and download it through the internet or from select Nintendo stores (dubbed 3DS Transfer Kiosks) directly into your 3DS for around 3/4 of the original price. Getting a game from a Nintendo Store should take around 10 minutes, while doing it online would depend on your connection. If you have a cartridge and want to put your game in your 3DS, you can't do it yourself, you need to go to a Kiosk and have them remove the license from your cart and basically they'll mark the game as Bought on your Shop, allowing you to download it later at home or at that same Nintendo store. You'll need to keep the cart in case you ever want Nintendo to restore its license in exchange of removing your rights over the game on the 3DS Store. If you only have the game in your 3DS and not the cartridge, you can buy a new game cart and give away your buying rights for it on the 3DS Store as part of the payment.

Pretty straightforward, right? Now, for the longer plan that's too complex for it's own good...

Idea 2 - Enter the GameTicket System

Many game copies, one playable game
When you buy a 3DS game, your cartridge will contain two things: the "GameData", and a "GameTicket". You can install the GameData (the game itself, which contains the graphics and sounds of the game) in as many 3DS's as you want, but you only get one GameTicket per cartridge. Only a game with a GameTicket can be played, but you can transfer the GameTicket from the game cart to a 3DS with the GameData for that game and vice-versa. When the copy of the game in your 3DS is playable because it has the GameTicket, the actual cart won't work, because it lacks the GameTicket; and when the cart has a GameTicket, you can't use the copy in your 3DS because it doesn't have a GameTicket. That way, even if you can have as many copies of a game as you want, only one game can work at the same time. You get to choose if you keep your games in their respective carts, or if you copy the GameData's to your 3DS and transfer your GameTickets to said 3DS.

Getting extra tickets
Nintendo would sell GameTickets online in the 3DS Shop Channel, for a lower price than the actual cartridge. Each GameTicket would cost about 3/4 of what the full game costs (say, a GameTicket for a $30 game would cost around $22). This would be useful if a friend lends you a game and you really like it (it'd be cheaper than buying the entire game), or if you lose your cartridge and you had your GameTicket in there, but you still kept the GameData in your 3DS. It would also be useful for...

Buying games online, PSP Go style
You can get the GameData of any game without a ticket for free from the 3DS Shop Channel (or from select Nintendo Stores, if you have a slow internet connection) So if you choose to do so, you can get the GameData for any game for free (or at least for something cheap, like $5) from somewhere and buy the GameTicket for that game for a discounted price and OWN the game without ever getting the cart! It is not only cheaper than getting carts, it's more eco-friendly than buying your game in a plastic-made cart.

Finally, we get accounts
Anyone that has played a 360 or a PS3 knows that having an account for each person is the most useful thing ever. For one, you don't have to worry about not having enough save slots in a game for a new player, since each player gets as many slots as they want. It also allows people to keep all their downloaded games even if they switch to another console, as long as they log in using their old accounts. And I won't even mention the awesomeness of Achievements/Trophies. This would be really useful with the 3DS, because if something happened to your 3DS (if it gets stolen or if it breaks), you would still have all the GameTickets you bought online, ready to be downloaded in any other 3DS (as long as you accept an agreement where all GameTickets will be deleted from your old 3DS the next time it goes online, if it was stolen. And the 3DS gets online in any spot it finds, so it would have to be taken to a pretty deserted place with no Wi-Fi hotspots for the GameTickets to not be deleted). Plus, it'd make it easier to transfer everything to the next-gen handheld when it comes out.

Nintendo going 2.0
Remember how a guy from Sony (or was it that Pachter analyst?) said that retail games were doomed, and that downloadable games are the future? Well, with the GameTicket system, Nintendo would get the best of both worlds: they allow users to get their games online right into their 3DS by letting them buy just the GameTicket and download the GameData for free (this would be cheaper for the buyer since the GameTicket is only 3/4 the price of the entire cartridge), they still sell games in actual physical cartridges for those that don't like paying for untangible things, AND they allow gamers that bought cartridges to "transfer" their game into their 3DS (copy the GameData, move the GameTicket) and forget that their cartridge ever existed. The GameTicket system would be one heck of a move for Nintendo, whether it be on the 3DS or the next Nintendo system.

Now, this system could eventually be circumvented with hacks (say, being able to play installed games that don't have a GameTicket), but this method is for people that actually buy their games but want to have all of them on the go. People that don't buy their games legally will be able to play them from flashcarts anyway, so having all their games on the go isn't a problem for them

So what do you think of this idea? I actually thought about it a lot, and I think it would work out pretty well. If you find any flaws or exploitable loopholes, I'll try to fix them!

 

[dsfanatic5]

As a collector, I hate downloadable games, and only wish I could have hard copies of games like Braid and Limbo (on my Xbox 360). The PSP Go is pretty much a failure, so I doubt Nintendo would even think about adopting the same/similar download system for it's main games. Downloading games isn't practical for a lot of people, or a good investment if you trade your games in at GameStop to get credit towards other games.

It's an interesting idea, but very unlikely, since the PSP Go has proven that most gamers don't want this. Plus, if your 3DS gets stolen, how could you retrieve your downloaded games when the thief is using your GameTicket?

 

[notmeanymore]

A similar concept is what I believe the Xbox Live login system runs from. You can transfer the ability to log into your Live account to a USB Drive or a Memory Unit, but as soon as you "Recover Account" on another Xbox instead of using the login data on your thumb drive, the thumb drive's data won't work anymore. I presume it works on a randomly generated key.

1. Drop the downloadable game concept. Might as well drop the entire idea. The last thing Nintendo needs is an easier way for ROMs to get out.
2. Failing that, the downloaded/installed games would have to be stored on the 3DS's internal memory, else, again, ROMs would run rampant. And in case you haven't noticed, the 3DS doesn't have a 60GB HDD like the Xbox, so I doubt that would work.
3. Failing that, the ticket would be stored in the internal memory, making it...mostly inaccessible. At least until hax come around.

Beyond all that, it's a plausible method, but one that isn't for Nintendo.

Another thing: What's stopping me from installing my friend's GameTicket for the next Pokemon onto my 3DS then running off with it leaving him with a useless cart? Or trading a Ticketless cart to GameStop?
To fix that, you'd need to have the cart itself have master privileges, meaning it has the power to void the currently used ticket. But if that's the case, what's stopping me from installing Pokemon on my friend's 3DS, giving him the ticket, then voiding his in mid-gameplay so I could do multiplayer with him?
The fix for that would require anyone who wants to use the GameTicket system to be connected via Wifi at all times.
This will also probably require multiple databases as Nintendo would have to keep logs of all 3DS games sold and what the current random key is for that game.

Enough criticism: this idea is a little ahead of it's time. The tech is available to do it, but not at reasonable prices.

 

[davidsl_128]

Those are some interesting points... let's see what I can think of...

1- Well, with or without this ROMs WILL be uploaded somewhere. What Nintendo should work on is strong security so that even with tons of ROMs, people can't really play them. Besides, this is for the people that don't even know what an R4 is, the "legal" people. Flashcard users don't really care about having to carry tons of carts, because they don't have to

2- Like I said, more ROMs isn't a problem. Storing GameData in SDHC cards would be just fine, and since GameTickets would be stored in the 3DS internal memory and not in the SD, games would still be locked to that 3DS even if the GameData is on an SD card.

3- I don't really get that one sorry :S

And about the stealing the GameTicket thing, the only thing I can think of is a physical something on the cart that shows if it has a Ticket or not. Like, whenever you insert/remove the GameTicket, a little sign changes from a green "GameTicket Inside" to a red "No GameTicket Found!". Now it'd be a physical sign, not a led light or something, and it'd be behind transparent plastic/glass so you can't manually change it without opening the cart. And the cart would be made to break if it was opened, so yeah. So you'd know if you get an "empty" (ticketless) cartridge because it has a huge sign on the back saying that there's no ticket when your friend returns it or when Gamestop gets it.

And I mean, what kind of "friend" steals your copy of Pokemon and runs away? It's not the "friend" to whom I would lend my games, at least

Now, if someone grabs your cart and "steals" your ticket and you don't notice, it means they had the chance to take your cart away, but they had the "decency" to let you keep your GameData. But they could have stolen the entire thing so the Ticket system didn't really help the robber much.

Besides, it isn't about the downloadable games. It's about playing games in your 3DS without needing to carry a bunch of cartridges, but still owning the cartridges for collecting/showing off. The ability to download for free the GameData directly to a 3DS only came by while I was writing this. It's only optional and, in fact, this entire GameTicket thing could be hidden somewhere deep in the manual so that only entusiasts do it. For the usual consumer, it would be the same game-buying affair.

EDIT: I have THE solution! Forget about the GameTickets, just allow gamers to buy a Cart or from online into their 3DS, and allow them to trade between carts and their 3DS in select Nintendo stores for a small fee. I posted it on my first post. It should be 100% less boring!

 

[notmeanymore]

Ok so you had a new idea that fixes to old idea, but now I'm lost as to why anyone (even Nintendo) would want it. The GameTicket system had some merit, but I see no need or want for someone to download a game for 3/4 the price then at a later date pay the other 1/4 for a physical cartridge.

The Kiosks themselves may be a good idea for Nintendo to save some money, but positioning is everything. If they don't roll out the kiosks into enough areas, the idea will flop. In fact, I actually see the kiosk being almost exactly like a Redbox. Just have one in every GameStop.

 

[WiKiLEAK]

Yo, go get a patent for that game model before Steve do it

 

[NaokiKitsuhine]

Isn't more easy to lock the game to be instaled in other 3DS when the game is instaled in one?

For example
You install the game in one 3DS, this 3DS will mark in the cartridge in some area in its memory that this game has been instaled and in the ROM it will ADD your DS serial

then if you try to install on another 3DS, it will read the cartridge, and will not install because there is a data there saying that this game is instaled in other system, and if the ROM leaks somewhere, it will have the serial of the 3DS and will be blocked by some updates... Very Simple

Sorry about the bad english

 

[ryan90]

Nice model although i don't pretend to have read through it all but i doubt Nintendo would go to all this trouble, the 3ds will probably have instore cartridges and the possibility of being able to buy the games over the Internet from your 3ds just like the Playstation network and the dsi store.

The only way to own a physical copy and a network download will probably be to buy both.

Other idea could be to give people a code when they buy a physical copy that will give you a large discount on the network version.

e.g. Buy the game for £25 and then with discount code get the 3ds store version for only £5

Seems acceptable to me

 

[jan777]

Isnt that how the wii operates?

For channels I mean, when you download wiiware/vc, you install both the data and the ticket (.tik files, IIRC)
The data can be moved between sd cards and other wiis, but that data wont work if you dont have the ticket installed too.