Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo 3DS Early Impressions
Now that E3 attendees have had a chance to try out the new revision of Nintendo's portable console, critiques of the 3D effect and updated layout are starting to filter in. Opinion thus far has been mostly positive. Wired writes, "The graphics, which are much more advanced than you’d expect from Nintendo, left me pretty much in disbelief. They're on a level with Sony’s PSP, probably even a little better than that. But the eye-popping 3-D effect makes everything that much richer." According to the Guardian's Games blog, it works "beautifully." They add, "You can perceive 3D only if the console is directly in front of you, but this is fine for handheld gaming. I actually found it pretty adaptable in terms of viewing from different vertical positions. It was much more sensitive if the handheld was turned slightly to the left or right, but really, it coped perfectly with the slight shifts and jerks you'd get on a morning commute." During Shigeru Miyamoto's annual dev roundtable, he explained how Nintendo felt that particular types of games, such as shooters, benefit more from the 3D effect than others, and how Nintendo hopes to update as many older games as they can to incorporate 3D gameplay in addition to 3D graphics.
An explosion of porn apps for the 3ds.
(ha)
Just responding because your post is remarkably offputting if the intention was to refer us to this site.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
little to no respect for developers
Bullshit. Sony entered the market when Sega was trying to sell people on a hacked-together dual-CPU console even Sega struggled to develop for, while Nintendo was fucking about with a drifting launch date nobody could schedule for and hefty licencing fees. Sony offered the developers a console with extensive libraries, comprehensible hardware, and a due date that publishers could actually rely on. They made a system developers would want to work with. They were able to snatch the market from Nintendo and Sega because they had much, much more respect from developers than anyone else at the time.
Ironically having taught Nintendo and Sega that lesson, leading to a Dreamcast and GameCube that were very coder-friendly they completely forgot about it when the PS2 rolled around, with predictable consequences.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Not "causal", "casual". He's attempting to characterise the supposed hardcore-casual gamer dichotomy as being a fallacy, something I'm inclined to agree with a priori.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You need to do your research, badly. The DSi already has a Media Player, and it also already has a browser. We can expect that the 3DS will be no different. I personally am not bothered by an e-mail client - and I'm sure most other people aren't as well. I do not need yet another place to check my email. Second of all, the reason why something like the iPod touch won't be able to scratch much of the 3DS (and following consoles) market is because the Touch/iPhone provide very poor precision, response time, and absolutely no input feedback, not to mention that with a touchscreen system you have to block part of the screen (possibly critical parts) to play. Phones which do not use touchscreen input rarely (read: never) have good button placement for the activity. In addition, these devices are rarely designed to be held in the hand for extended amounts of time. They work for short 5-10 minute sessions, but after that they can start to get uncomfortable. These aren't problems in the much more simplistic flash-like games which consist of nearly 100% of the current smartphone market. But add in games with more complexity, and the issues for the format become all more apparent. Most fully featured smartphone games currently exist in current console games as minigames or Quick-Time-Events. The "Pokemon Marathon" which debuted in Heart Gold & Soul Silver behaves exactly like a fully featured game I would expect on the iPhone (it even uses touch control), there is even arguably more depth to it than most iPhone games. But this 'game' is a tiny (and ignorable) part of the main game itself.
The predictable consequence that the gamecube and dreamcast failed and the PS2 still sells?
The GameCube did not fail. It made plenty of money for Nintendo, and then it got a clock speed upgrade and a Bluetooth receiver and became the disruptive Wii. Dreamcast, on the other hand, was FUDded to death by Sony.
The wiser people at Microsoft and Sony are pissing themselves right now.
The 3DS is better in literally every stat than the PSP, even the PSPgo. Better graphics, better screen, bigger data files (2GB max at launch opposed to 1.8GB UMDs), better input (analog stick, dpad, AND touch), better everything.
Nintendo spent a time with weaker graphics to perfect a "gimmick", and once it became cheap to increase the graphics, did.
Meanwhile, on the "big boy stage", both of the other big 3 are busy trying to desperately imitate the "gimmick" of motion control that they spent the past few years mocking Nintendo for doing. Meanwhile, Nintendo's perfecting it.
It's cheap, from an IP standpoint, to add more graphical power. You don't really need to research it, for example.
And now, it's cheap from a hardware standpoint, too.
That 8 bit chiptune version of the Jaws Theme you hear is Nintendo, stalking Sony and Microsoft's lunch.
The Wii3D or whatever their next console is going to be is going to do the same thing the 3DS did to the PSP, to the PS3 and the 360. Take a gimmick they have perfected, perhaps add another gimmick, but increase the graphics and remove the one advantage the other two have.
When the PS2 launched, it had a few extra features over the Dreamcast, which was the only console of that generation out at the time. The first was backwards compatibility; it could play the entirety of the (large) PS1 library of games. The second was the ability to play movie DVDs. The third was 3rd party support, whom had left Nintendo (due to Nintendo's decision to use 16-64MB carts as opposed to 700MB CDs) and Sega (not sure why they left Sega, but looking at the Saturn library, it's clear they did) during the previous generation.
The PS3 might have done well in the current generation... but Microsoft, despite being a relative newcomer to the scene, released the Xbox 360 a year before it... and say what you will about Microsoft, the 360 had an extremely impressive showing. The PS3 has been trying to play catch-up with the 360 ever since. Sony was banking on PS2 compatibility and Blu-Ray movie support to sell more units than it actually did. However, even those two features combined couldn't save the PS3 from its largest, most glaring mistake: its price tag. The 60GB model cost twice as much as the PS2 did at launch ($600 vs $300), and six times the cost of a Slim PS2 at the time. DVD was a revolutionary step in video playback. Blu-Ray is an evolutionary step in video playback... it's really just a higher capacity DVD. Four years out, we're finally starting to see games where Blu-Ray discs make a difference, most notably Final Fantasy XIII.
Meanwhile, Nintendo aimed at the casual market... and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The low price point helped considerably; from memory, around the time the PS3/Wii launched, prices were: Wii $249, PS3: $499/$599, Xbox 360: $399/$499)
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Why would anyone buy a toaster when they have an oven?
Sometimes you just want a device that does one thing, and does it well.