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Nintendo's Big-Screen 3DS XL Meets Lukewarm Reception
MojoKid writes "Nintendo took the wraps off its new, super-sized 3DS XL handheld on Friday, but reactions have been anything but enthusiastic. The new DS offers a larger set of screens (4.88 inches top / 4.18" bottom), better battery life, and will ship with a copy of New Super Marios 2 but it's launching into a very different market than what the original DS XL faced in 2009. The 3DS XL's battery improvements aren't just icing on the cake — they're seen as remedying a critical problem with the current handheld. It also won't support the second circle pad added by the Circle Pad Pro, which implies Nintendo is ready to kill that peripheral altogether. The other major problem is that a larger screen isn't really what the 3DS needed in order to be more successful."
My biggest issue with existing handhelds is the size. Sony's PSP and Nintendo's offerings have always been designed primarily for a Japanese market. As a result, my hamfisted hands can never hold one of these things comfortably, and even moderate duration play sessions cramp the hell out of my hands. With a larger overall size to the device, I'm hoping it will be significantly more comfortable.
... in order to be more successful was for the iPad never to have been invented.
Wrong market.
Portable game systems are generally aimed at younger audiences and are built for immersion. The games tend to qualify as "games" rather than "time wasters", the sort of stuff you get on the app store doesn't compare to full RPGs or platformers with 20-60 hours of play.
The 3DS' problem was, and is, that it sucks. The 3D is not a big enough gimmick to make people want to leave their almost-the-same DS behind. Nintendo sold a butt-ton of DS consoles, the 3DS has better CPU/GPU/RAM but the crap battery life and price hurt that badly. Nintendo should have just come up with something new instead of riding the 3DTV bandwagon, they're at their best (Wii) when they stop playing follow the leader.
Don't you mean Surface. Because that is going to totally steamroll the iPad.
Well, once they ship it.
Might take until they ship the second rev of the hardware, and the first service pack. But then, it's game over. Everything else will just be gone. PlayStations. Recycling bin. Wii's just wee in the corner. iPads (only the new ones) will be torn apart so their screen can be reused as an external monitor for the Surface. iPhones will be skipping rocks. Hell, desktops and laptops are done too, because the Surface can do it all. No compromises. Except for the small screen, no cellular wireless, keyboard you may have some issues typing with. But you'll still be able to run your DOS apps!
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Contrary to the Apple Fanboy mantra, the iPad is not the be-all and end-all of everything electronic. Any gamer will tell you that there is no substitute for tactile buttons. Sure touch screens and motion sensors have their place, but when you want quick and responsive interaction, you can't go past physical buttons.
1st person shooters have done little to change despite a whole console (X360) dedicated to them. They change a few things and add levels; but THANKFULLY do not waste with redone themes and new cut scenes to disguise the rehash around a lame new movie plot.
Mario is THE platform game and all of the genre tries to achieve Mario's perfection. I am sure glad they don't make a "Mario: The yearly sequel" with video cut scenes from a plot book, "edgier" graphics, different enemies that all work the same, another kind of fireball which kills stuff the same, yet another tutorial level, and even more ironic realism.
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Contrary to the Apple Fanboy mantra, the iPad is not the be-all and end-all of everything electronic. Any gamer will tell you that there is no substitute for tactile buttons. Sure touch screens and motion sensors have their place, but when you want quick and responsive interaction, you can't go past physical buttons.
Yes, but you can download games using the App Store, and have a 10" screen to play them... oh, and games cost $.99 or maybe $5. A "real gamer" might shy from it, but for every "real gamer" there's 10x casual games. Sad thing is, Nintendo envisioned this back in 2007 with their Wii - not built to satsify hardcore gamers, but great at a party.
Nintendo's (and Sony's) mobile gaming market has be severely disrupted in both price and technology. Yes, a $30 Zelda game is probably a great game, but is it really 30x more fun than Angry Birds on a large iPad display? That's not even covering those freemium role playing games where you can pay $0 and spend hours enjoyably - again, on a much larger screen than the DS.
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As someone who played every Zelda and every Final Fantasy out there, I must say that yes, they are 30x more fun than Angry Birds and any free/freemium/5$ RPG I found on the app market.
I am sure glad they don't make a "Mario: The yearly sequel"
2007 - Super Mario Galaxy
2009 - New Super Mario Bros. Wii
2010 - Super Mario Galaxy 2
2010 - Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary Edition
2011 - Super Mario 3D Land
2012 - New Super Mario Bros. 2
2012 - New Super Mario Bros. U
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You mean wall candy?
As someone who does a lot of handheld gaming (need something to do on those long business trips...) I'm in complete agreement with TFA for once. They're spot on in summing up the 3DS's current shortfalls.
The 3DS really made two cardinal sins that are going to be difficult for Nintendo to correct for. The first was that Nintendo jumped on the 3D bandwagon at a great financial and technical cost. That autostereoscopic screen is really expensive to manufacture, and it's the single biggest power hog on the 3DS (it needs a very strong backlight). As a result it's also the primary reason for the 3DS's terribly unportable battery life of 3-5 hours.
The second sin was of course the control scheme. Actually, having one circle pad wasn't the problem; the problem was that Nintendo then went and designed their flagship 3DS title (Kid Icarus) around a convoluted control scheme that all but requires a stand in order to allow the user to use the one circle pad, the stylus, and the buttons at the same time. Consequently everyone who picks up Kid Icarus quickly comes to the same realization: this would be so much easier with two circle pads.
If Nintendo had gone in a different direction with Kid Icarus so that it worked well with the 3DS in your hands, no one would be the wiser. Instead by releasing a game with poor controls they've drawn attention to their own control deficiencies. Ultimately as a 2011 product they probably should have just done two circle pads in the first place, but really no one would have noticed or cared if their first party games had worked well with the one pad. Essentially they created the problem where there previously wasn't one.
Furthermore the 3DS XL can't really solve any of these problems, all it can do is exchange them for new ones. The larger battery improves the battery life for example, but now the console is oversized and unpocketable, and the pixel density becomes very poor. Nor does it do anything about the control problems, if not making them a bit worse since a Circle Pad Pro hasn't been announced for the XL. The only problem the 3DS XL really solves is the same problem the DSi XL solved: it allows Nintendo to go after the niche market of people who find the pocketable form factor too small to use (primarily the older generations with their poor eyesight and muscle control).
If Nintendo really wanted to fix the 3DS they could, but it would be painful and I can't blame them for not wanting to do it. They'd have to release a 2DS with a traditional (non-autostereoscopic) screen and a second circle pad. The former would solve the battery life issue, and the latter would solve the control issue. The problem with this being that besides the reputation hit they would take, it would also mean that current 3DS owners would be forced to buy the Circle Pad Pro, which would not go over well with what's effectively a budget market.
In the meantime the 3DS and 3DS XL are sitting on top of a dysfunctional mobile gaming market. Cell phone games suck because of control issues and the limited development resources that $0.99 can buy, the old DS is getting very long in the tooth, and the Vita - though the most traditional and sane of the current generation handhelds - is expensive and unpocketably large. No one seems to be capable of offering what the market has traditionally wanted: a cheap, pocketable device with good controls and the battery life to last through a transcontinental flight.
They've been pimping Mario harder than usual lately, but really they have done a fine job of keeping it fresh until the last year. Even SMG2 (the most direct Mario sequel in years) did a great job improving on SMG1's concepts and exploiting what worked well. Rather than feeling like a rehash Nintendo made it feel like the game SMG1 should have been from the start, and consequently it's still the gold standard for 3D platformers.
Now the new renditions of New Super Mario Bros. on the other hand may be where the wheels start to come off. So far Nintendo hasn't shown that the new games are a great deal different than their predecessors; they don't do a good job showing off the capabilities of their new hardware, and if anything it looks like both games will be easier than NSMB Wii. At the same time Ubisoft has shown a shocking knack for 2D platformers with Rayman: Origins, which means for the first time in a long while a good platformer is available on a non-Nintendo console.
and that children is why we invented dosbox
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
You're mixing 2D platformers, 3D platformers, and rereleases in there.
And, I think bussdriver meant "Yearly releases" as it is typically used with games like call of duty: there's little to no difference between releases. Super mario galaxy and new super mario bros are completely different games.
No, but its certainly enough to hurt Nintendo(and to a lesser extent Sony) by attacking 2 of their key markets, retro and casual games.
First look at Retro, Square has actually been doing a lot of pioneering in this territory. All their FF famicom games have already been released for iOS(and most if not all for Android IIRC), and FF Tactics seems to be doing pretty well as well. Now RPGs are more suited to touchscreens as you dont necessarily need to react to everything in real time, but a lot of companies are having success releasing retro games for portables.
The other, perhaps for Nintendo even more important market segment is casual games, esp. those for adults. The DS was able to mop the floor with the PSP in terms of total units shipped largely because they appealed to the casual gamer, but the casual gamer is moving in droves to cell phones, largely because for them its one less thing to carry.
Cell phones will never be a complete replacement for consoles, but they can still do a lot of damage to the portable market..... While this generation of portables is still quite young, it will be interesting to see if Sony's play for the more hardcore portable gamer ends up paying off as that kind of gamer is much less apt to choose a cell phone over a console.
Monstar L
Let's face it. In the age of the touchscreen tablet, this rehash by Nintendo looks like something only the 10-yr old and under crowd would find acceptable, notwithstanding the cheapskate faithful addict market sector.
The trouble with touchscreen gaming is that it does not suit games that require a controller. The virtual d-pad is too finicky and is no replacement for real buttons (IMHO). I will happily play games that require the touchscreen or gyroscope on my iPhone, but I will jump back on my DS Lite for platformers.
The thing that stops me from getting a 3DS is the region coding. I don't want to have to even think about where I am buying something from when I am shopping online.
What Final Fantasy 3DS game?
The 3DS sadly showed Nintendo did not quite get their own market.
The DSi XL was brilliant. Going to a tiny low res 3d screen after that felt insane. It is not just that 3D wasn;t as big a thing as some thought, the screen itself was pants especially compared to the DSi XL screen.
And right now, the new 3DS XL just seems very very low rez. The phone and tablet markets are in a pixel race and nintendo ain't even competing at the bottom. 400 x 240 is the resolution for the top (3D) screen. Back when Nokia still rules the phone market, they already considered this low. Very low. With retina displays and full HD phones out, this just looks BAD. REALLY REALLY bad. If anyone dared to launch a phone with such a screen they would be laughed out of the market even if they offered to pay you to use it.
And Nintendo not only expects you to pay but pay through the nose. The gap between other platforms and the Nintendo handheld has just kept on increasing, partly because the competition has leaped ahead while Nintendo has sat still.
The same issue is true with the Wii, when it launched, HD screens were not that widespread yet, but nowadays, they are and boy do the Wii graphics look bad. Some of the games are good but the graphics really hurt your eyes if they are played on a larger screen.
And the 3DS XL is just that, a bigger screen, the original 3DS games were already pixelated to hell and back, now they just increased the size of the pixels when everyone else has been making them smaller.
There is a limit to how low budget you can make your hardware and software look and still charge premium prices for it. See the mockups people made for the 3DS and how the final product turned out. Gosh, people sure were wrong weren't they... or maybe it was Nintendo who was wrong.
Markets move on. Nintendo hasn't.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
An edgy Mario would be too disgusting for most markets. Can you imagine a 60 year old midget plumber-- who has subsisted on nothing but magic mushrooms laced with human growth hormone for decades-- stalking down a nasty old stripper named "Princess Peach", as he and his brother go on a quest to see who can curb stomp the most endangered sea turtles and who can accumulate the most concussions by brutally breaking bricks with their shattered skulls over and over and over again. We can leave the gritty reimagining to 007 or MGS; let's keep mario safely in cartoony goofy form where he belongs.