I know a guy who says with some self-assurance that the 3DS will ruin games in a way. He says the 3DS being 3D and more powerful and not suited for 2D will make low-budget games impossible to get made or that there will be a lot less made, therefore he/we will lost out on sleeper hits and lowbudget masterpieces. I told him the PSP2 would, if he’s right, not be any different since it’s rumored to be as powerful as a PS3 and have 2 analog sticks etc, which would mean making games for it too will be expensive. He didn’t budge, still thinks the 3DS is like the biggest threat to gaming ever. I don’t understand him… am I a dumbass or is he?

Nah, sounds like he is 😛
Just look at how much shovelware/low-budget games that got released for the Wii, despite it being 3D and “powerful”.

Plus, even if not that many smaller games get released on cartridge, there is still the 3DSWare download service where games like that will be featured.

Or… you could get an iPhone 😉

True low budget sleeper hits are far and few, but they usually get good sales in Japan that more than make up for the dev cost.

If anything, according to the type of argument, the release of the DSi ruined the game industry because of the lack of GBA slot, when it would have been less expensive to just develop 2D SNES-style games that didn’t require the stylus/touch screen.

Anyway, the 3DS will be backwards compatible with DS games. Thus, the current devs have no pressure to make a 3D game if they can’t afford to.

I think that mainstream low-budget games have been dead on consoles for a while now. What that market has sort of transformed into is the overly broad genre of “indie games”, which are gaining a lot of popularity on the PC. As of late, I’ve been doing a lot more PC gaming than I used to… Of course, I don’t even have a console from this generation, so I’ve also been having fun sifting through older console libraries looking for hidden gems. At any rate, I don’t think the 3DS is going to “kill” that market when it’s already been dead for a while in my opinion.

He is nuts. Smaller indie games have always been hard to do on consoles making a cart alone costs a decent amount of money. With most consoles now having online stores/marketplaces there has been a huge resurgence of 2d/indie games that can all be sold for under $20. Hopefully nintendo will continue to improve their online store and attract some good developers like the guys that did the bit trip series and we could see some great games for the 3DS.

For example look at the xbox if I go to a physical store I cant really buy many 2d games but the marketplace I can get Super Meatboy, Braid, N+, Limbo, and many more all for under $20 and all 2d indie games.

He says the 3DS being 3D and more powerful and not suited for 2D will make low-budget games impossible to get made

He should realize that the 3DS is perfectly suitable for 2D games, because the 3D can be turned off (not only through the slider but also by the game devs if they require so). In fact, with more processing power, a higher resolution and an app store, we’ll probably enjoy more interesting indie games on the platform now.