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Nintendo Release 3DS XL and New Mario 2 In the USA Today
Croakyvoice writes "Nintendo has today released the 3DS XL in the U.S. The console comes with features such as screens which are 90% bigger in size than the original 3DS, a much needed improvement in battery life and also the 3D effect on the console has noticeably improved. The 3DS XL is Nintendo's attempt at even moreso dominating the handheld console market over the PSVita, but also bringing back the gamers lost to the likes of Android and iOS devices. The other major 3DS news of the day is the release of New Super Mario Bros 2, a continuation of the DS game released in 2006. In Japan the game has sold over 800,000 copies since game launch and Nintendo will be hopeful to replicate that success in the U.S."
Pixel density is lower, pixel size is greater, but the screen is so much easier to see and use. 3d is now an option for me, where it wasn't before.
I traded my red 3ds for a red 3ds XL this morning. The finish is worse( no fancy acryllic finishes or metal bits, no short aluminum pen), but it definitely feels more sturdy, and is so much easier to use that I don't mind it feeling like a cheaper version of what I had.
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Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.
Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.
We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
I like the format/size of the DS's, and I wouldn't mind having a little hand held game machine, but I just can't get over all that hardware sitting there and no way to use other apps than just the games. These things have just about everything one would need to call it a micro-netbook or something like that, if only it had any way to do anything other than play games. The homebrew on the DS is there, barely, but they should really just support it out of the box. For example, my household would probably have 3 less ebook readers, and might have skipped 2 tablet purchases and a netbook.
The bottom screen could easily be a small keyboard (obviously not as nice as a netbook, laptop, or desktop, but it'd work as good as a smartphone onscreen keyboard). You could also do a very nice email client on that thing, using both displays while reading mail. And it has good audio/video support already, so why not a multimedia player (mp3 at least)? Toss a video chat thing on there as well... that'd be kinda handy. As it is, it does a specific set of games better than my phone, tablet, and netbook, but completely lacks every other feature they have, and it's entirely a software issue - that seems very silly IMO.
FWIW, it irks me just as much that game consoles also have a very large void of apps (and I hate saying "apps", but it fits here). Why can't my PS3 w/ BT keyboard fire up a terminal, ssh, vnc, firefox/chrome, vlc, thunderbird, skype, rythmbox/etc, etc etc etc?
The funny thing is, Nintendo is probably the healthiest game/hardware maker in the business. Unlike Sony/Microsoft, Nintendo usually makes a profit on their hardware rather than selling it at a loss in hope of recouping their loss via games. The Wii has outsold the 360 and the PS3, the 3DS has outsold the PS Vita by leaps and bounds.
Nintendo is far from being the next Sega.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Nintendo is currently losing money, last quarterly result that I saw. The Wii also has not outsold the 360 for quite some time.
Nintendo would do better to give up on handheld hardware and focus on finding a good way of porting their franchises to Android/iOS instead. It's horribly impractical for most people to bring another device around with them besides their phone.
Maybe financially they're doing well, if you're really into stock valuations. But with gamers, they're on the verge of becoming irrelevant - everybody know there's no good 3rd party games, just endless re-treads of a few (admittedly beloved) franchises. Wii sold a lot of units to people who put the Wii in the back of the closet after half a year.
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You probably also whined about the use of bits instead of bytes to denote ROM capacity in the old days, despite the fact that it's a perfectly accurate term, and in fact mirrors the way that EPROMs and RAM chips were measured and marketed as components.
I absolutely agree that in this case the OP is complaining about a non-issue, and I don't agree that it would automatically be assumed that "90% bigger" would be taken to refer to the diagonal.
;-)
However, the example you gave *was* (IMHO) an example of manufacturers being intentionally misleading. Virtually all consumer-oriented software back then was quoted in terms of its kilobyte or megabyte footprint (*). While the use of megabits may undeniably have been technically correct, its previously near-unknown use in a consumer end-product context like this was quite obviously chosen to mislead or obfuscate.
(*) No, no-one gave a toss about "mibibytes" and all that **** back then. Mibibytes.... pah. To paraphrase Paul Calf, I'm going to get a dog and train him to attack anyone who says "mibibyte"
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