Oh my dear sweet santa. Nintendo is making a 3D version of the DS/DSL/DSi/DSXL. I absolutely cannot fathom why they would do this. It’s like a perfect immaculate present addressed to Seth Hearthstone, wrapped up with a great big 3D bow on top. Do I want a 3DS? Heavens no, I want to watch Sean Malstrom’s reaction to it!
Let’s time-jump back a month or two to the announcement of 3DTV gaming on PS3. How did Sean react to the idea of a second visual channel for gaming feedback?
Gaming already had its 3d revolution. But note that the 3d revolution of gaming occurred INSIDE the game. The display being 3d or not isn’t going to change anything.
Gaming has already had its 3d revolution. Having 3d outputs is only changing the style, not the substance, of games. The next big change in gaming will be done with altering the substance of how games can be played (as motion controls did). Not in the style of how the graphics are displayed.
At the time I pointed out how sexist it was for journalists like Sean to ignore the potential for real 3D gaming to bridge the gap between men and women playing 3D games, since women are genetically predispositioned to have greater difficulty extracting 3D information from a single visual channel due to poorer spatial reasoning. It’s becoming ever clearer that Nintendo is reading this blog, since they’ve decided to announce a 3D gaming project long before they were ready to do so. They saw the potential I pointed out, and decided they had no choice but to act on it. I do fear they’ve missed the point by pushing it to their handheld, but more on that later. Let’s get to the good stuff. What does Sean have to say about Nintendo’s contribution to the 3D revolution happening outside the console?
I believe Nintendo is intentionally creating a mirage that 3d visuals are going to be totally what the DS 2 is going to be in hoping its competitors will take the bait and ‘compete’ by making a huge 3d handheld. I KNOW that Nintendo isn’t revealing the true coolness of the device because they wouldn’t want competitors to steal it.
Sweet gumdrops of irony! So first we have denial, where Sean assumes it must be some kind of trick. “Surely my beloved Nintendo isn’t doing something I didn’t predict! They’ve never betray me like that, never, never!” he cries, his face soaked with tears and rain. “No, it must be a ploy of some kind. They are really doing something else. This isn’t happening.” Really, Sean? But you were so quick to dismiss Sony’s “obsession with 3D visor games“, without blindly guessing that there might have been “more to it”. As the truth of the matter sinks in, a new perspective takes hold of him.
Do you know what triggers new hardware from Nintendo? It is Sony. Nintendo will move to checkmate whatever Sony is doing.
Everyone is asking the wrong question about what is Nintendo doing. The right question is, “What is Sony doing?” Sony must be doing something to cause Nintendo to stir.
So now it’s a reaction to Sony? “Sony must be up to something! That’s it! Look over there, I think I see something moving! I can’t tell what it is, can you? I’m sure it has nothing to do with the 400% increase in sales of iPhone game software, it must be Sony!” Sorry Sean, but the PSPgo already happened. That front is at a ceasefire right now. Way to start jumping at shadows, guy. But that’s not the end of Sean’s manic switching of stances. He still has one more harebrained explanation up his sleeve.
It is a standing ‘order’ from Iwata to never release a console late when a competitor does.
It may appear Nintendo is throwing away sales of an already perfectly good DS. But these Japanese companies think far ahead in the future than we do. From their perspective, billions of dollars are at stake. If they don’t launch when their competitors do, Nintendo might end up with another Gamecube or N64.
So it’s not a reaction to Sony anymore, it’s a preemptive strike in the handheld market! “Of course! I knew it all along! Those previous two blog posts were the mad ravings of a lunatic who simply hadn’t had his mid-morning and mid-afternoon sedatives yet! I’m feeling much better now, thank you. *TWITCH*” Oh Malstrom, it is so much fun to watch you go. I also find it most amusing that you don’t seem to realize that Sony is also a Japanese company, and that your racial stereotyping is terrifically unprofessional. But what really is the 3DS? Here. Let a calm and rational person explain it for you. I’ve given it some time, thought it through, and I think I understand it now.
It’s just a really bad idea.
Such a small screen means tiny 3D objects, which means tiny tiny parallax. 3D effects are best with full headsets, theater screens, television screens, or at least comic book pages (in that order). The screen of a handheld is already inappropriate for most 2D projection 3D games anyway. Every handheld shooter I’ve played has been a nightmare of frustrating FOV settings and objects in the distance being too small to see. Adding a second visual channel isn’t going to fix this. Secondly, announcing the next hardware revision BEFORE the current new hardware revision even becomes available is some of the abject worst PR and business malarky I’ve witnessed in a long, long time. Thirdly, their choice of “glasses free” 3D means they’re using a lenticular of some kind.
Say hello to halved horizontal resolution. Either you just doubled the price of your screen, or widened your pixels. Kick me in my eye, or kick me in my wallet. Either way you’re going to kick me. At least Playstations owners who buy a 3DTV and PSMove will be getting the holodeck. 3DS users will be buying the hologram. The kitschy 90s hologram.
In the approximated/appropriated words of Sean Malstrom quoting Jackey Vinson: “I love the 3DS. It’s so bad.”
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You are obsessing over Sean quite a bit, aren’t you?
We don’t even know what the 3DS is, but here’s another possibility:
Also:
1. Why wouldn’t Nintendo want to mislead their competitors?
2. If Apple is such a threat, how come NDS sales apparently reached new records in 2009?
By: lulz on March 24, 2010
at 1:31 pm
You and every other parroting retard have posted that video, and it is not what Nintendo is doing. They only put out new hardware when there is something they can’t do with the current hardware. Are you paying attention?
1. A better question is why would Nintendo want to mislead their customers? If the product’s advertised for its 3D screen, it has 3D screens. You probably thought they were joking about the DS having dual screens, didn’t you?
2. Nintendo isn’t looking at totals, they’re looking at percentages. Which the pie chart shows is slowly leaning out of favor with them. Not dramatically yet, but imagine if the PSP hadn’t declined during that time. That pacman chunk would be looking far more sickly.
By: sethhearthstone on March 24, 2010
at 2:30 pm
The video shows how the idea could work on a basic level, but to truly make it work well you need better hardware.
MotionPlus, anyone?
By: Splashman on March 24, 2010
at 5:29 pm
“Virtual Boy DS” is redudant, for “DS” was synomonous with “Virtual Boy” in the first place.
By: Phoenicks on March 27, 2010
at 4:07 am
I wouldn’t say it’s a bad idea just yet. It’s a strange idea, sure, and I personally wouldn’t agree with Malstrom that it’s a trick by Nintendo, but don’t equate a console you don’t know anything but some of the tech qualities about with one that’s long dead with far too many mistakes to list.
If it comes out with a decent games library on launch that alone is going to make all the difference in the world to how well it does. What did the Virtual Boy have at launch? Mario Clash, some games about Tennis, Golf and Bowling and Wario Land, with probably about the latter being the only decent game. The 3DS won’t come with that mediocre a game library… well, hopefully it won’t.
Maybe the 3D isn’t the only feature either? The touch screen wasn’t the only new one for the DS, and neither was the camera for the DSi.
But I don’t know. I’d just say wait until some pictures/concept art/screenshots/videos are released before assuming it’s going to fail in advance. That and the launch game list, since every console without the latter being halfway decent has failed miserably on the market.
By: cheat-master30 on April 17, 2010
at 10:03 pm