3DS lineup is packed only with important releases. Medium and small titles are missing and this is the biggest 3DS problem since its launch.
It never had the support previous market leaders had. DS faced the same problem only after PSP's Monster Hunter revival.
True, but only to a certain extent. 3DS does not have as many small and middle-sized releases as a console leader should have, but the average output in the physical dedicated market declined over all platforms.
There are some key aspects to consider. For example, many 3DS games are overlooked because they are targeted towards a younger or female audience, or will never come over here, and therefore not much discussed; on 3DS Nippon Columbia has a 250k release, a 100k release, and plenty of releases around 20k units (we could classify its output as small releases with occasional medium-sized ones); anyway, there is not much discussion about the company, for example when a new game is announced but, on the other hand, a company like Nippon Ichi gets a lot of exposure even though its business shrinked and the last releases sold on average below 20k units. Another example is Disney Magic Castle 2; it will never reach the same numbers of the original one (>500k) but it has a shot of doing well; nevertheless, its announcement was basically forgotten. Therefore, I feel there's also a fair problem of reception (because most of those games are not percived as valuable for us as gamers) on top of the actual lack of small and middle-sized releases; we have plenty of niche publishers on 3DS as well, such as FuRyu, Happinet, Rocket Company, Artdink, Alchemist, Takara Tomy, Sonic Powered... Many of them keep releasing 3DS games (just look at the output of Sonic Powered) meaning that the market is there.
By looking at the
3DS release schedule, I see plenty of small and middle-sized titles, from both big companies such as Nintendo itself, and smaller companies: Famicom Remix, Kobayashi ga Kawai Sugite Tsurai!!, Railway Japan! Yui Rail Edition, Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka Airou Village DX, Picross 3D 2, Guru Guru! Chibi Robo, Pro Yakyuu Famista Returns, 7th Dragon III Code: VFD, PriPara Mezase! Aidoru ☆ Grand Prix No.1!... Those are some examples just until October. Again, not as much as DS, PSP or PS2 but a fair amount nonetheless.
Another aspect is of course the eShop. Plenty of games that would have been released in physical format are now digital only, and we already witnessed some success story, such as Bike Rider, Battle Tank, The Denpa Men, Pullblox, on top of games like Pokémon Shuffle.
Then again it would be interesting to see why there is a shortage of small and middle-sized releases - perhaps the opportunity cost is higher when publishers can get out games for 3 platforms at once within the Sony ecosystem (and maybe it is why Nintendo is working towards that direction).
