Today's "Nintendo Download" release is out, and despite some internet rumors that shockingly turned out to be untrue, we're not sketching up a storm in Moving Memo just yet. Instead, DSi owners get to pick from a chopped-up version of the otherwise excellent Clubhouse Games, or the lengthily-renamed Paper Airplane Chase (you may remember it as Paper Plane, lifted from the original WarioWare.)
Now, setting aside the fact for a moment that Paper Airplane Chase is probably worth $2 loaded as it is with some new modes—and, heck, I got Bird & Beans for the same price and enjoyed it—this marks the third week in a row that DSiWare has been rather lackluster, to be charitable. We're taunted by glimpses of WayForward's Mighty Flip Champs, new Art Style games like Decode and PiCOPiCT, as well as the aforementioned Moving Memo, which is spoken of in reverential tones in all corners of the Internet... but we instead get small pieces of games we've already played or are just plain not interested in.
Now, obviously it takes time to get games out—Moving Memo in particular has some Internet infrastructure that needs to be up and running—but the pace of interesting releases is starting to become worrying. If we're coming up on a month with only Aquia to show for interesting new content, what can we expect from DSiWare down the road?
Because of this, I simply can't recommend that anyone replace a working DS with a DSi at this time. There's just too little to hold anyone's interest in that situation, realistically. I love it to death—it's the definitive DS, to be sure—but the new stuff under the hood is getting woefully short shrift. It'd be far better to wait for a buildup of DSiWare as well as any other DSi-specific releases yet-to-be-announced. But right now, you are simply not going to be getting a return on your dollar.
Now, obviously it takes time to get games out—Moving Memo in particular has some Internet infrastructure that needs to be up and running—but the pace of interesting releases is starting to become worrying. If we're coming up on a month with only Aquia to show for interesting new content, what can we expect from DSiWare down the road?
Because of this, I simply can't recommend that anyone replace a working DS with a DSi at this time. There's just too little to hold anyone's interest in that situation, realistically. I love it to death—it's the definitive DS, to be sure—but the new stuff under the hood is getting woefully short shrift. It'd be far better to wait for a buildup of DSiWare as well as any other DSi-specific releases yet-to-be-announced. But right now, you are simply not going to be getting a return on your dollar.