Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Nintendo 3DS Announced

Source: Nintendo

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (Minami-ward of Kyoto-city, President Satoru Iwata) will launch "Nintendo 3DS"(temp) during the fiscal year ending March 2011, on which games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.

"Nintendo 3DS"(temp) is going to be the new portable game machine to succeed "Nintendo DS series", whose cumulative consolidated sales from Nintendo amounted to 125million units as of the end of December 2009, and will include backward compatibility so that the software for Nintendo DS series, including the ones for Nintendo DSi, can also be enjoyed.

We are planning to announce additional details at E3 show, which is scheduled to be held from June 15, 2010 at Los Angeles in the U.S.


Okay, this is not also a big surprise coming out of nowhere, it's also quite strange for Nintendo. They care about new ways of playing games, new input methods. Advancing the output alone never concerned them. So, this seems to be quite the opposite of what they've done in the last few years, especially because 3D without 3D glasses sounds very advanced on first glance. BUT looking at this video of a Nintendo DSi game using similar techniques you can see how this could work. It uses the camera to know how it has to change the output. In January Iwata also said something about motion sensoring, which could also be used to generate the 3D view. And this doesn't simply change the output, it could lead to a whole new way of playing Nintendo DS games. That's the beautiful thing about Nintendo. If Sony would use 3D for their console, it would be just for the sake of using 3D technology. But if Nintendo uses 3D, it's because they want to deliver new ways of playing and experiencing games.

The question right now is more or less, since it seems to be already possible on the DSi, why making a new handheld system for this? There must be a good explanation for that. But I guess it doesn't work too well on the DSi and they want to optimize the system for the 3D gameplay. Of course better hardware for the graphics and maybe using two touchscreens instead of just one. And the mentioned motion sensoring could also help to determine the position for the view of 3D images as a support when the camera fails to do it correctly. But let's wait until E3 for more information.

What does that mean for Zelda? It could mean the first portable fully 3D Zelda game, of course. But I would say, they will continue the hybrid gameplay style, which means there will still be the bird's eye view involved or at least a limited viewpoint. But you'll have to play with the perspective to see certain things like in the above video. 3D puzzles. Could be great.

And I guess, I won't buy a Nintendo DSi then. :D And the "Virtual Handheld" with all Zelda GameBoy classics on it will probably be part of the new system.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

you are so wrong about the way the 3D works, its real 3D, not tilt your head 3D. actually you can't tilt your head when playing the 3DS
and it has better specs,motion control, and a slide pad
that's why its a new console

TourianTourist said...

And you're so commenting a months old and totally outdated blogpost... :D