Nintendo Downplays Reports of 3DS Flaws

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @08:15PM from the must-be-holding-it-wrong dept.

RedEaredSlider writes "Shorty after the US launch of Nintendo's last portable console, 3DS owners have begun reporting issues with the device. In one case, dubbed the 'black screen of death,' users reported instances where their 3DS screens grew black shortly before their consoles became unresponsive. Other owners documented errors involving a screen instructing them to restart their systems. Nintendo has taken notice of the issues, and offered 3DS users a fix for the error. 'If anyone is experiencing any problems with their Nintendo 3DS console, we recommend that in the first instance they download and install the latest system update, now available online,' the company said in a statement." The 3DS's launch was reportedly more successful than the DSi's. iFixit did a nice teardown of the device a while back, and Nukezilla's Peter Silk put the screen under a microscope.

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My experiences with the 3DS thus far by RogueyWon · 2011-03-30 20:53 · Score: 3, Interesting

I picked up my 3DS at UK launch on Friday. So far, I've had a single black-screen (which happened on quitting a game), which isn't a major irritation. The hinges, however, are very, very loose - if the thing isn't in the "full open" position, it tends to either flop towards that or to flop closed. Other than that, it feels like a fairly nice piece of kit, rather than the "plastic toy" feel you got from the DS.
The biggest problem for me has been headaches associated with even the mildest 3d settings. I've made a more detailed post about that (and other experiences with the machine more generally) in my journal, though it may be a bit on the tl;dr side.
Obviously, turning the 3d off solves this problem, but that does leave you with a machine that is basically an expensive and slightly underpowered PSP with a touchscreen.