According to both Capcom and the instruction manual, Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS, was never meant for the secondhand market. In the US, video game rental company GameFly has classified the title as “Not Rentable”. Unlike other 3DS titles, Mercenaries 3D saves game data directly to the cartridge, carrying over all skill points and mission scores.
The secondhand game market for The Mercenaries 3D was dealt a death blow yesterday. Capcom confirmed game data was saved to the cartridge and that “secondhand game sales were not a factor in this development decision.” In Japan where the game debuted June 2nd, shops are selling used copies for as low as 500 yen (£3.87).
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D is not the first title to sandbag the secondhand market. Monkey Ball 3D suffered a similar fate, forcing game data to be saved to the cartridge instead of the 2GB of internal memory or SDHC card slot. Let’s just hope these two titles are isolated cases and other major players don’t follow suit.
Why do you think Capcom opted to save game data to the cartridge? Do they have it out for the secondhand market and game rental companies or did game restrictions force their hand into cartridge-only saves?
via ThisIsMyNext
