How did I not know this was made by a GAFer? Will definitely +1 on the 3DS eShop sales. D-pad seems pretty integral to my enjoyment.
Thanks for the information. Very cool and insightful to how the indie scene is these days. Really pathetic that Steam Greenlight is so bad.
I think the fact that it isn't 10x the price of the mobile version (plants vs zombies, angry birds) probably helps. The gaming community will always buy quality games as long as they aren't being ripped off in the process.
While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your statement I think the two examples you chose aren't the best. Plants vs Zombies is 7.99, I think it's normally 4.99 on the iOS App Store? Despite the price difference, PvZ is in the top 20 eShop all releases chart and has almost 14,000 ratings. On iOS it has 17,500 ratings. While I'm not directly relating ratings with sales, on the eShop you need to have played the game for at least one hour before you can return to give it a rating. I'm sure PvZ is quite profitable for Popcap/EA.
Also Angry Birds Trilogy has sold like 500,000 copies on 3DS despite being an order of magnitude more expensive than iOS/Android versions.