Nintendo 3DS Early Impressions 273
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.
I see.... (Score:5, Insightful)
An explosion of porn apps for the 3ds.
(ha)
Re:Nintendo is destroying Sony? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just responding because your post is remarkably offputting if the intention was to refer us to this site.
Re:The same Sony that ruthlessly killed Sega? (Score:5, Insightful)
little to no respect for developers
Bullshit. Sony entered the market when Sega was trying to sell people on a hacked-together dual-CPU console even Sega struggled to develop for, while Nintendo was fucking about with a drifting launch date nobody could schedule for and hefty licencing fees. Sony offered the developers a console with extensive libraries, comprehensible hardware, and a due date that publishers could actually rely on. They made a system developers would want to work with. They were able to snatch the market from Nintendo and Sega because they had much, much more respect from developers than anyone else at the time.
Ironically having taught Nintendo and Sega that lesson, leading to a Dreamcast and GameCube that were very coder-friendly they completely forgot about it when the PS2 rolled around, with predictable consequences.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Eh what? (Score:3, Insightful)
They gave both Nintendo and newcomer Microsoft a great opportunity to grab a sales niche and publisher and developer support. I doubt we'd be looking at a three-horse race this generation if Sony had its shit together on the PS2.
Re:Nintendo is destroying Sony? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not "causal", "casual". He's attempting to characterise the supposed hardcore-casual gamer dichotomy as being a fallacy, something I'm inclined to agree with a priori.
Re:Nintendo is destroying Sony? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently people at Nintendo are reading his blog, because Nintendo's strategy seems to go in the direction Malstrom points :)
I'm pretty sure the Wii came out before his blog started, and that Nintendo/Sega have been into more casual mini-game style games for a lot longer than the Wii. Saying a blog has "opened your eyes" makes it sound more like you are easily brainwashed.
You know it's quite possible for lots of different types of games to co-exist in the world? Same goes for pretty much everything else in life. You don't always have to artificially split everything into two polar opposites and gather yourself to one side of it. You can enjoy the whole spectrum of experience (yes, slight Donnie Darko reference there but it's a good way of saying it) without making everything into some kind of pathetic fan boi Holy War.
Re:Nintendo may be king of sinking ship? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nintendo is destroying Sony? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Eh what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nintendo may be king of sinking ship? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, just so we're all on the same page, you're Sean Maelstrom, right? I mean, I read a couple of those articles, and there's pretty much nothing special or noteworthy about them. I have difficulty seeing how someone could find them so inspiring as to go on this Slashdot campaign to promote them without standing to directly benefit.
Re:Nintendo may be king of sinking ship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nintendo may be king of sinking ship? (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, I can't help linking to this guy Malstrom's blog.
notrandomly == malstrom?
Re:Nintendo is destroying Sony? (Score:4, Insightful)
Non-trivial arguments about the real world aren't simple enough to apply logical rules to, and mistakes in logic are easier to recognize by pointing them out with respect to the specific case, rather than by the generalized case.
The idea that you can define a set of axioms and predicates and use rules of inference to prove that the 3DS is an attempt to "destroy" Sony, or something else in a real-world debate, is really crazy, so I don't think concepts from hard-nosed logic and proof are actually useful.
Also people all too often refer to "fallacy" like a fancy word for "mistake" (see the response before this one "a priori"), or to dismiss someone's argument in an intentionally inaccessible way, which comes across like condescending nonsense.
Mainly it's too often used to turn the vocab of logic and proof into an underhanded debating tactic, which seems like the opposite of what it's supposed to be for.
Re:Nintendo may be king of sinking ship? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why buy a dedicated handheld gaming device, when you can get smart phone, pda, or tablet like the iPhone/iTouch/iPad, Zune/WM7, Android, or WebOS device that is just as portable, will do a decent job playing games, plus let you surf the net, do your e-mail, and hold your media (music, videos, etc.)?
I've heard that argument before...
Why buy a dedicated iOS tablet, when you can have a fully featured laptop that is just as portable, will let you run Flash, Photoshop...
And yet, iPads sell. So here you are, using the same argument, this time in favor of buying an iPad. People like a simpler, dedicated device, that does more than a "decent job" at the things they want.
Re:Eh what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The predictable consequence that the gamecube and dreamcast failed and the PS2 still sells?
The GameCube did not fail. It made plenty of money for Nintendo, and then it got a clock speed upgrade and a Bluetooth receiver and became the disruptive Wii. Dreamcast, on the other hand, was FUDded to death by Sony.
Re:Nintendo may be king of sinking ship? (Score:1, Insightful)
If I was in charge of Nintendo, I would put a big chunk of flash in the 3DS, and include a browser, e-mail client, and media player. And also make a smart phone version as well.
Also, it should support DirectX 10. And it should also do teleconferencing. And it should change colors based on the user's mood.
Blah blah fuckity blah.
There's a reason you're NOT in charge of Nintendo, and that's because your ridiculous contraption would either have to sacrifice on a lot of it's graphical capabilities which would make it just another smartphone or you'd turn an easily-affordable handheld into an $800 cell phone no one feels compelled to buy.
Your statement reflect the same bullshit spouted out by PC enthusiasts 10 years ago. Why get a PS2 when I can already play games on my PC? Now most of the market develops for consoles(at least the segments that want to make any noteworthy profit).
The handheld games that are out are piddly little flash games that are certainly fun, but definitely not anything to write home about. When kids ten years from now are thinking of the game that gets 'em all nostalgic-like, odds are they're not going to say "Doodle Jump." More capability is all well and good, but the options your asking for would be multi-tasking to the point of having to ignore the game part of your handheld altogether. Some things still need a dedicated piece of equipment. Quality gaming just happens to be one of those things.
Re:Eh what? (Score:1, Insightful)
PS2 was the clear winner of the previous generation, but you can't reasonably claim that the GameCube failed. It had a long, profitable life with lots of acclaimed games.
DreamCast, on the other hand, was a failure. And a sad one at that, considering how awesome it was in some respects.
Re:Nintendo is destroying Sony? (Score:3, Insightful)
Same here. I've played FPS, MMOs, RTS pretty hardcore over the years, even been in competition teams, yet I still love my casual games. Anyone who suddenly changes their likes for a blog is a fairly shallow person indeed.
I'd say that the GP is the person who's blog they're trying to promote. This Sean person seems like someone who has never been good at games, but likes them. Nothing wrong with that, but you don't have to rag on the hardcore gaming market just to compensate.
Anyway, OT this should be so... 3DS seems like the best platform for 3D so far. Glasses free is how it always should be. There's no conspiracy there of Nintendo "actively seeking to destroy SCE", they don't like Sony, but it's not a destruction tack. Otherwise they wouldn't release bottom of the market gear, you know, opposite end of the spectrum to Sony.
I dislike Sony as much as the next person, but I know where their priorities and pricing is positioned. To dispute this would be to lie to yourself.
The Wiser... (Score:5, Insightful)
The wiser people at Microsoft and Sony are pissing themselves right now.
The 3DS is better in literally every stat than the PSP, even the PSPgo. Better graphics, better screen, bigger data files (2GB max at launch opposed to 1.8GB UMDs), better input (analog stick, dpad, AND touch), better everything.
Nintendo spent a time with weaker graphics to perfect a "gimmick", and once it became cheap to increase the graphics, did.
Meanwhile, on the "big boy stage", both of the other big 3 are busy trying to desperately imitate the "gimmick" of motion control that they spent the past few years mocking Nintendo for doing. Meanwhile, Nintendo's perfecting it.
It's cheap, from an IP standpoint, to add more graphical power. You don't really need to research it, for example.
And now, it's cheap from a hardware standpoint, too.
That 8 bit chiptune version of the Jaws Theme you hear is Nintendo, stalking Sony and Microsoft's lunch.
The Wii3D or whatever their next console is going to be is going to do the same thing the 3DS did to the PSP, to the PS3 and the 360. Take a gimmick they have perfected, perhaps add another gimmick, but increase the graphics and remove the one advantage the other two have.
Re:Nintendo may be king of sinking ship? (Score:1, Insightful)
I have a cellular phone, which I use for telephone calls. I need to charge it every 36 hours or so. I have a DS Lite. I use it for games. I can leave it on for a week, sometimes gaming sometimes in sleep mode.
When I look at my phone and I imagine using it for calls, music, internet, and my intense gaming needs, I see myself corded to a wall. I see myself sad, and not actually using that device for fear of running down the battery and missing an important call. I've tried playing flash games on my phone...within minutes I turn them off and whip out the DS.
A friend of mine has a smart phone. Occasionally, when we're all conversing, he will grab it to look up something. The rest of us move on with our lives and the conversation, which is quickly derailed when he's found what he was looking for and announces it. After an awkward silence, which I see as a period of mourning for the now dead conversation, we try and help him catch up to reality. It's interesting to note he games on his DSi, not his smart phone.
Re:The same Sony that ruthlessly killed Sega? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the PS2 launched, it had a few extra features over the Dreamcast, which was the only console of that generation out at the time. The first was backwards compatibility; it could play the entirety of the (large) PS1 library of games. The second was the ability to play movie DVDs. The third was 3rd party support, whom had left Nintendo (due to Nintendo's decision to use 16-64MB carts as opposed to 700MB CDs) and Sega (not sure why they left Sega, but looking at the Saturn library, it's clear they did) during the previous generation.
The PS3 might have done well in the current generation... but Microsoft, despite being a relative newcomer to the scene, released the Xbox 360 a year before it... and say what you will about Microsoft, the 360 had an extremely impressive showing. The PS3 has been trying to play catch-up with the 360 ever since. Sony was banking on PS2 compatibility and Blu-Ray movie support to sell more units than it actually did. However, even those two features combined couldn't save the PS3 from its largest, most glaring mistake: its price tag. The 60GB model cost twice as much as the PS2 did at launch ($600 vs $300), and six times the cost of a Slim PS2 at the time. DVD was a revolutionary step in video playback. Blu-Ray is an evolutionary step in video playback... it's really just a higher capacity DVD. Four years out, we're finally starting to see games where Blu-Ray discs make a difference, most notably Final Fantasy XIII.
Meanwhile, Nintendo aimed at the casual market... and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The low price point helped considerably; from memory, around the time the PS3/Wii launched, prices were: Wii $249, PS3: $499/$599, Xbox 360: $399/$499)
Re:Nintendo may be king of sinking ship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would anyone buy a toaster when they have an oven?
Sometimes you just want a device that does one thing, and does it well.
Re:Why the 3DS is relevant here (Score:4, Insightful)
Sony itself will destroy Sony.
That is, the films and music divisions of Sony are impairing the technology divisions of the company, and there's no clear way out of that mess.