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Nintendo Announces 3D Successor of Nintendo DS
An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo has posted a press release (PDF) titled 'Launch of New Portable Game Machine,' promoting a new, upcoming handheld game console temporarily named the 'Nintendo 3DS,' which will feature 3D graphics without the need for any sort of special glasses. It will be backward-compatible with DS and DSi games."
An article at Kotaku speculates on how the 3D tech will work. The launch window is vague — sometime between April 2010 and March 2011. More details will be revealed at E3 in June.
Between April of this year and March of next year? Details to come in June? So if it launches in April, we wont find out about the tech until June?
From the Kotaku post that describes a Japan-only 3D title for the DSi, it appears that this new device (if using similar technology) is not 3D in the "Avatar" sense, but 3D in the "Johnny Lee Head Tracking on Wii" sense.
The image itself is still flat, but the system updates the image to present different angles based on the way you hold it (using the camera with head tracking). So you can turn the 3DS to look around objects. I think that would be a very effective (and useful) use of 3D than simply making things look like they're coming out of the screen.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
I look forward to the successor of the Nintendo 3DS: the Nintendo 3DS Max.
That's easy. The user closes the left and right eye rapidly in an alternating fashion and in sync with the stereo signal switching.
Well, the press release states "during the fiscal year ending March 2011". That's literally between April 2010 and March 2011, but the summary could have been a bit more clear. Maybe they're aiming for the holiday season of 2010?
I hope this 3D fad is over soon. It's just another excuse to distract people with eye-candy instead of creating something more compelling.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
I was hoping 3D would kind of peter out in a couple years but it's getting ridiculous. :(
As a man-child who hates change, the Nintendo handhelds have been the last bastion of sprite-based gaming for me. As a cyclops who doesn't see in 3D anyway, I have no interest in the gimmick. Don't you do this to me Nintendo!
--- Do you believe in the day?
Don't make another gimmicky console overflowing with copious amounts of shovelware.
Nintendo doesn't release shovelware, except possibly the WarioWare franchise which is a well-executed satire of shovelware. As for third-party shovelware, the developer criteria are already significantly more restrictive than those for iPhone. If Nintendo does anything to rein in third parties' shovelware, it will draw criticism that its platform is too closed and that there is no way for a third party to make money from the platform.
And no, first-party shouldn't be the sole source of quality games.
You can't have it both ways.
Virtual Boy anyone? I thought they did this before :P
The VirtualBoy should never have left the prototype stage. To play it you had to sit in an awkward position and the "3D" was pretty much just a gimmick. E.g. in Wario the blocks swing in and out of the screen instead of up and down like in Mario games. I recall wondering what Nintendo was thinking when they released a product even the ardent Ninentdo fanboys back then had trouble praising.
That's more than likely a function of your age, not the intrinsic fun of the game. Many people seem to have an age where video game enjoyment is at a peak. Afterwards we're nostalgic for the fun we had at the time. There seems to be similar effects with some genres of movie (especially sci-fi) and music.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Your point of view is right, thank you for sharing, if you have the time, also came to see my site...
If you're going to spam forums, at least learn a bit about the culture there. No self-respecting Slashdotter would start a post how you did.
Hey, it works for Windows!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Yes, please Nintendo, stick to the 0.01% of the world that wants hardcore action games (to the extreme)! They'll make you a good half a million dollars before they figure out how to pirate games and are finished buying anything ever.
Or, you know, you could just not buy Imagine: Babiez/Petz/Hamsterz/Whateverz. Amazingly, when you don't pirate games, you actually only play games that are interesting to you! It's an intriguing concept, actually.
Your comment is ridiculous. Anyone with $129.99 (+tax) can buy a DSLite. Therefore, companies will make games for various target audiences. Pre-teen girls have no interest in 3D FPS games. They will be posting the exact crap you did on Barbie.com or wherever. Once you come to realize the world doesn't revolve around you, you will see the Lite (heh, see what I did there?).
Nintendo doesn't appreciate online gaming enough and is still too stuck on maintaining its "Disney clean" image.
Then Nintendo could do something that Disney did long ago to maintain its "Disney clean" image: release edgier stuff through subsidiary labels like Touchstone and Miramax.
It's hard to start homebrew on a DSi. In order to start a program even in DS mode, you have to first dump a licensed DS game using a DS or DS Lite and then copy that to your DSi-compatible homebrew card so that it will pull the equivalent of a PS1 swap trick when the DSi tries to check the digital signature. DSi homebrew, on the other hand, requires one of several specific DSi Game Cards with a hacked save, much like Twilight Hack and Indiana Pwns on Wii or the 007 Agent Under Fire and MechAssault exploits on the original Xbox, except 1. you need a DS or DS Lite and a normal DS homebrew card to write the save using something like RAC, and 2. the maximum size of an app is tiny because they haven't yet figured out how to load a .elf from the SD card.
But unlike the other companies in the industry, when it rehashes titles, Nintendo usually creates games you haven't played before.
Actually, they're sort of the exception to the rule that game companies abuse their trademarks to basically do nothing of any value. Nintendo uses their trademarks to make good games sell even better.
I wonder if it's going to look like the tech demo shown in this Youtube video:
Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote
Y
I thought the GameCube would be Nintendo's last console, but they survived through the worst sales they ever had with a console.
I thought the DS' twin screen gimmick would never stand against the PSP, but the DS went on to become the best selling portable of all time.
I thought the Revolution controller was a gimmick, but it touched a nerve with gamers when it was publicly playable at E3.
I thought the name of the Wii would prevent it from ever being taken seriously, but people got over it.
I thought the inferior graphical capabilities of the Wii would sink it, but the sales numbers showed the market didn't care.
I thought the Wii was just a fad when it first came out, but the sales stayed high and continued to break records three years later.
I thought Wii Fit wouldn't take off, but then it went on to exceed the PS3's entire fanbase.
I thought the 3D graphics of the 3DS would add nothing substantial to games, but by then, I learned to stop betting against Nintendo.
I don't know, have they really done anything all that original with Mario lately? Just feels like sequel after sequel. It actually seems a bit lazy to me since they just reuse the same characters for everything. They drive cars, play tennis, beat the crap out of each other, etc. Just seems like an excuse for Nintendo not to do anything interesting as far as developing new characters.
Yeah, I grew up with Mario, but it is hard for me to get excited about him at this point. Nintendo needs to innovate a little more as far as its characters go.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
You should try Super Mario Brothers Wii.
They go back to the side-scroller style with a new game - different suits, new mechanics, and new worlds in which to chase down Bowser and Princess Toadstool. It's the same type of game as the old SMB games, but it is definitely not re-hashed anything except the premise.
Probably the funnest part about it is the co-op play. The mechanics are such that you really do need to strategize and cooperate with your partner in order to succed in co-op mode. My roommate and her boyfriend are so bad together, it's hilarious. ^^
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Nintendo survived the N64/Gamecube era stuff, which is something Sega didn't, due to their strong hand hold market position. GBA and Pokemon carried Nintendo through some dark times.
Nintendo isn't fault less. Like other Japanese tech companies they tend to make wild, custom built technology that may fly or crash. Conveniently forgetting stuff like Virtual Boy or the weak "successes" provided by Nintendo by Disk System, N64 and GameCube to praise their recent success is kind of naivety. In particular, a big thing that will ruin the 3Ds is the price tag or increased software production costs.
Gizmodo says "The Japanese publication Asahi is claiming it'll use one of Sharp's parallax barrier LCDs."
Parallax barrier have been used in cell phones before, although recently people have been getting excited about the 3M system that uses frame-sequential alternating directional light emission (such as in the viewfinder of the Fuji FinePix Real 3D).