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)
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.