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Nintendo Chief: Consumers Don't Understand 3DS Yet
gabbo529 writes "Nintendo's latest financial results reveal that initial sales for their portable 3D gaming system have been underwhelming at best. What's the reason? Nintendo chief executive Satoru Iwata says consumers have yet to fully understand the console's 3D capabilities, even when trying it out. Others think it might have something to do with the console's high price ($250) and the lack of big-name titles available (Mario and Zelda are not yet out)."
You're just holding it wrong!
I've had a 3DS since launch-day (more detailed thoughts in my journal) and I think I could summarise my opinion of it as follows:
- It looks and feels like a nice piece of hardware; much less like a plastic toy than previous Nintendo handhelds.
- It's also a step up on the DS from an ergonomic point of view. The analogue stick is good - better than the PSP's - but there's only one of them. This means that a lot of the same control issues that plagued certain genres on the PSP are already re-emerging on the 3DS.
- The 3D effect is jaw-dropping at first, but headache inducing (for me) even after relatively short play sessions and a distraction in the longer term. It's worth seeing, but not a reason to buy the machine in itself. Also, the 3D effect is massively hard to sustain if you are not in a "stable" environment. If you're trying to use it on a train or plane, you may have problems.
- Take the 3D effect away and the graphics are... ok. Roughly speaking, the launch titles look slightly worse than current PSP titles (not helped by the lower screen resolution). However, it's unfair to compare launch titles to titles for an older system that developers know well by now.
- The battery life is bad. Depending on 3D and sound settings, I get between 3 and 4 and a half hours from the thing. This compares to 4-6 hours from the PSP and 12+ hours from the old DS.
- Load times are also more noticable than on the DS. None of the launch titles have loading times as bad as something like Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep or Dissidia 012 on the PSP, but they can still be irritating. Plus those PSP titles are far more ambitious than any of the 3DS launch titles.
- The launch titles are not fantastic. I got Pilotwings Resort and Ridge Racer with my console; they're both fun for short periods, but also very shallow and they get boring really fast. I've tried a few of the other launch titles for varying periods of time. Most of them range from "mediocre" to "outright bad". Street Fighter 4 is pretty good, but is always going to feel second best to the home console versions.
- And there's not much else in the pipeline. Yes, there's a Zelda remake coming, but I've bought that game once already and can't get too excited about buying it again. Beyond that... who knows?
The biggest problem the 3DS has is distinguishing itself from the (now much cheaper) PSP. The 3DS has the 3D effect, which is undoubtedly clever at first, but which starts to feel like a gimmick fairly quickly. Beyond that, the PSP has a better screen, better battery life and graphics that are more or less on a par with the 3DS's (if not slightly better on the basis of current titles). It also has the advantage of having a huge number of decent games already out there. Which, as I've posted on earlier threads, does make me wonder why on earth Sony now want to retire the PSP for a (risky, expensive) successor, when now would be the perfect time for them to just push cheap PSPs and major releases and kill the 3DS stillborn. The PSP is handily outselling the 3DS week on week in Japan and is holding up remarkably well in other markets. That's no small achievement for a console that was written off as a "failure" within months of launching.
Don't get me wrong - the 3DS is in no way bad. Turn the 3D off (as most people will after a day or two) and you are still left with a pleasant to use handheld with some nifty features. But are those features enough to justify the price for most gamers, against the backdrop of very little currently worth playing on the thing? Probably not...
One thing's for sure - complaining that customers "don't understand" your product is not the way forward. It's the kind of talk I always associate from companies who know that they're losing. A bit like when a game developer responds to bad review scores by saying "our game isn't intended for critics".
Any time you claim that "consumers don't understand..." or "consumers need to be educated about..." you Have A Problem.
Most of the time, you are just engaged in the corporate equivalent of teenage whining about being misunderstood. Sorry. Your product is not, in fact, a special flower, misunderstood by the uncaring public. They just don't like it very much.
On occasion, you have in fact created something so new, unique, or ahead-of-its-time that its utility is not yet well understood. Unfortunately for you, while this is more likely to ensure you a spot in history, it also usually means that you are the sucker who did the R&D and then ran out of money while waiting for customers to wake up; and, when they eventually did, somebody else was far better situated to fulfill the demand. Sorry.
Frankly, I'm going to suggest that the 3DS falls into option #1. The public understands "3D" perfectly well(in specialized theaters we've had some degree of it for what, 50 years?); but has also learned by experience that 90% of "3D" is gimmicky crap that costs more and frequently delivers less.
Nintendo gives the 3DS a switch to turn the 3D off completely. They've basically told developers that it's a gimmick, not an essential gameplay feature, and that they shouldn't make games that rely upon this feature.
Given that's the case, why would most developers stick their neck out to use it at all? Without a must-have exclusive game, Nintendo will always have trouble getting people to replace their DSi with something that costs almost twice as much.
Well, he could hardly say "people understand the product well enough to make a well informed choice not to buy the thing" or "people just don't care as much about this gimmick as we hoped they would" could he? One of which is closer to the truth in most cases.
The reason I'm not even considering one is that the battery life sounds atrocious. I don't want a mobile device that I have to charge up every 2-3 hours.
which is totally what she said
I played with it for a while at a toystore -- couldn't see the 3D no matter how hard I looked at the headache inducing blurred image.
This is the first time I am incompatible with an electronic toy, I urgently need an upgrade.
I've yet to see anyone who tries the 3ds and ISN'T immediately impressed with it.
Well I wasn't. The eyestrain was virtually instant and I didn't appreciate having to hold the device in a precise manner either to benefit from the 3D. The eyestrain was so bad I had to slide the 3D virtually to off which at that point means the feature may as well not be there at all. It's not like many games used it in any compelling way so it's no great loss to disable it. And once the 3D is out of the way what are you left with?
The 3DS is too expensive, the 3D is a gimmick, the launch titles are mediocre, the battery life is poor. It feels like a handheld which launched 3 or 4 years ago and is coming to the end of its life, not one which is just started. Maybe a "lite" variant will address the most glaring issues in the hardware and a price cut would help too but at the moment the 3DS can be summed up thusly - meh.
I've yet to see anyone who tries the 3ds and ISN'T immediately impressed with it.
Well I wasn't.
Maybe. But he can't see you.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It's funny, isn't it. There do seem to be studies - and proper ones - not ones paid for by Nintendo - which basically say "yeah, the 3DS is almost certainly not going to do bad things to your eyes". As a rational person, I trust these studies.
However, actually playing the thing in 3D is a strangely unnerving experience. You have to consciously allow your eyes to go out of focus - and then keep them like that - losing your focus again every time you look away from the screen. It may not be doing any harm, but on an instictive, gut level it feels like it is. So as an irrational person, I turned the 3D slider off after the first couple of days and, other than a quick test to see how it worked on a train, I haven't moved it since.
It's Nintendo that doesn't understand the 3DS. You've built a device with about a 5-degree usable viewing angle, and you've put motion control in the blasted thing. I know Nintendo has a long history of throwing a bunch of shit at the wall and quickly abandoning whatever doesn't stick, but really?
If a device doesn't "fit" and isn't priced fairly, they keep their current device or move on to some other product. Simple.
Steve Jobs, Jonny Ives and other designers realize that "fit" means easy to use and does the job.
I have to put Nintendo CEO Satori in the same camp as RIM CEO Basillie as CEOs who are out of touch with their customers.
I picked my 3DS up on the morning of the UK launch day, which was a Friday. This meant that I had the thing sat on my desk at work during the day. Quite a few of my colleagues came along and had a play around with it (to the extent that by the time I got home and finally got to use it myself, the battery was drained). Now, this isn't a scientific test by any measure, but I would estimate that about 15-20 people had a play around with the 3DS during that day. Of those, there were two who said that they absolutely could not see the 3D effect. There were another 3 who said that they could see it but were disappointed. The remainder were impressed by the effect, though a couple reported headaches after just a couple of minutes. We've got a good age range in my office and I noticed that there was an inverse correlation between age and ability to see the 3D effect. So my experience suggests that not everybody is immediately bowled over by the effect. A majority of people probably are - in the short term - but there is a definite headache-cost to it for at least some of those.
In a cave? Are you crazy? Do you know any study on the effects of living in a cave?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Potential customers understand it just fine. It's NIntendo that doesn't get it. The DS was so successful because it was affordable and had great battery life.
The 3DS is neither of those things. It's too expensive and the battery life sucks, all in the name of a gimmicky technology that most users wind up turning off anyway. I mean you can't even use the 3d on a bus, which is about the only place I ever use my DS.
This thing deserves to fail.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Ok really, when did Nintendo start hiring a Sony guy for their marketing?
I can't answer for others, but for me, I am waiting for games in which I WANT to buy. the overwhelming success of the Wii was due to quite a few things.
1. price (which 3ds has)
2. innovation (which 3ds has)
3. Popular games like Zelda, mario and metroid in which people are excited about (which 3ds, mostly doesn't have)
I want a 3ds, but without software to go with it, I am left asking... "Why buy hardware without software in which I am excited to play when I get home from work?"
I can't move my head or the 3DS more than a centimeter without the effect breaking like one of those cheesy 80s two-state holograms. It's more comfortable to play with the 3D turned off. The 3D itself is just like any of the glasses variety stuff: tons of bill-boarding that requires your eyes to refocus constantly, adds very little to the gameplay experience. I would honestly rather have the glasses if it meant I could move around a bit.
It's not a bad system by any means. It's just a shame to pay twice the cost of the DS for a device that has a quarter of the processing power of my year-old cell phone, especially when I turn the 3D effect off anyway.
That said, still waiting for Zelda, never beat the original OoT. They really should have just delayed the launch until June if they wanted to see bigger numbers.
Exactly! If you haven't bought the 3DS yet, that's only because you're an ignorant fool. If you're a smart person, clearly you would rush out and buy one. You ARE a smart person, aren't you?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This should mostly answer that. Only thing it doesn't list is the processor speed for the 3DS.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
I played a demo model just before launch and it is a big step up from the DS in terms of eye candy. What i didn't like was the 2 screens being different sizes (what ever happened to split screen games that I enjoy like Metroid Pinball?) the price tag and the battery life.
This is a second gen purchase at best for me (remember the first gen DS? ugh). I don't need another Zelda - Ocarina of Time re-run (despite it being the best Zelda game I've played). Street Fighter was great on the 3DS, Resident Evil looked great, but was as boring as it comes and the other games I played I just went meh.