Nintendo discusses how they increased the speed of the 3DS eShop compared to the DSi shop
The 3DS eShop is a significant upgrade over the DSi’s shop. Whereas it took forever just to connect to the service on DSi, Nintendo has sped things up quite a bit for the 3DS.
You may be curious as to how Nintendo accomplished the upgrade in speed. Satoru Iwata and Kazuto Nakaya explained:
Iwata: Oh, I see. And one of the other goals from the start this time was to increase the speed with which the screen changes. The Nintendo DSi Shop was browser-based, so in order to change the screen, the server made information for the browser to read, and that was then constructed on the screen, so screen transition wasn’t very fast. What did you do to speed it up?
Nakaya: We used a method whereby a database of likely content for display is created, then assembled and read first—like with the Nintendo Channel.
Iwata: In network communication, retrieving data in bundles is faster than flipping through it all.
Nakaya: Right. And our client programmers are doing everything they can to cut down on the amount of data.
Iwata: That persistent frugality has an effect on the speed of screen transition.
Nakaya: Yes. We’re building up the effects of a lot of such small efforts.
Iwata: When I first saw the prototype linked to Nintendo eShop, I couldn’t help but ask, “Is it really connected?” I couldn’t tell that it was accessing a server at all. It ran so smoothly that it seemed like mock data.
Nakaya: When it comes to speed, I think we achieved our original goal. But we’ve added some things internally, so it may be a little slower than the last one you saw. I’m a little nervous about it.
