I have always been a fan of Nintendo’s hand-held gaming machines. Between my brother and myself, we have a box in the basement with many of the GameBoy line: the Pocket, the Color, and the original Advance. The latest entry in my Nintendo collection is my polar white DS Lite, which continues to get a workout with games such as Spirit Tracks, Ghost Trick, and soon, Okamiden. I was never interested in the later iterations in the DS series as the DSi’s camera looked like a gimmick and the DSi XL appeared to be made so that grandma could play Brain Age with her grandchildren. When the 3DS was announced, however, I perked up. 3D on a hand-held? No glasses required? The ability to adjust the depth of the 3D? Wow, Nintendo, looks like you’ve done it again!
The big question is, will I buy a 3DS at launch? Will I stand in line with the other Nintendo fans to get one of the first 3DS consoles before they sell out?
No.
First and foremost, I have always enjoyed Nintendo’s hand-helds as a less expensive way to play video games. (Also, there was Pokemon – I mean, who didn’t play one of the first few generations of that franchise?) My brother and I grew up with a SNES because our neighbor gave it to us. We never bought an N64, GameCube, Xbox, or PS2 because they were too expensive. As I grew older, there was no way I could shell out for the current generation of consoles. At this point the DS Lite was out (and sold out for Christmas) so I managed to pick one up in January of 2007. At $130, this little gadget was fairly priced and has gotten tons of use. The 3DS on the other hand has a launch price of $250. I am not going to purchase a hand-held for the same price that I could have gotten a Wii at its launch, even if it does 3D.
Second, the battery life for the 3DS is terrible compared to, well, all other items in the DS line. Engadget reviews the Japanese 3DS here and states “The biggest 3DS disappointment is absolutely the battery life. The 1,300mAh battery is 30 percent larger than the one in the DS Lite but simply cannot deliver the same sort of longevity we’ve come to expect from previous Nintendo consoles, topping out for us at three hours and fifteen minutes with WiFi enabled. Compare that to the 15 hours the DS Lite could manage and you can see why we’re disappointed. Disabling WiFi added about another half hour.” Wow, that’s just terrible. Granted my PSP doesn’t get great battery life, but that is one of the many reasons that I don’t use it all that much (I also only have two games for it). I don’t like having to rummage around for the AC adapter if the battery is dying and I want to keep playing. Yeah, I have to do this now and again with the DS Lite, but I don’t want to have to do this on a regular basis. Again, it really comes down to price: I’m not going to pay $250 for something with the battery life of maybe 4 hours.
The 3DS has a lot of features that are still in the works, including more downloadable content and possible Netflix support. There are also some pretty cool games coming out for the 3DS (read: Ocarina of Time), but I am just going to have to wait for it to drop in price (which may take years) or win the lottery. I’m sure I’ll eventually get one, but it may take a while if it is as efficient as printing money for Nintendo as the DS Lite was.
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7 comments:
Agreed, it's too expensive! Also why won't they use the gameboy brand anymore?
March 17, 2011 at 6:48 PMI second the motion! I could buy a decent netbook or android phone with $250.00. Much of the features of nds lite's successor was created not to entice their patrons but for the sake of their business security notably their endeavor to fight piracy. This console hasn't impresses me at all, not even its 0.3 megapixel camera.
March 18, 2011 at 2:59 AMAre you people really that poor where $250 in 2011 seems like a lot? If you use inflation as a guide, which I'm going out on a limb here and saying you don't because of the very fact that you think the price point is too high, the first nintendo system (the NES) sold for $249.99 which in today's dollar would amount to a little over $600. Also take the PSP which 5 years back was released for $250 as well. Ahem... That was 5 (FIVE!) years ago. So remember time passes,
March 18, 2011 at 3:53 PMI know back in your day you could by a hamburger, fries, and a 10 cent superman comic for a nickle (?) but I digress; its today... so get a job.
First of all, the author is simply stating why they will not buy the 3DS at launch, not that it won't be purchased at a later date when the price has dropped. Second, even though the PSP had a launch price of $250, it has not sold nearly as well as the DS series. The total number of PSP units sold (as of Feb. 2011) is 67.8 million vs. total number of DS series units sold (as of Dec. 2010) is 144.59 million. Clearly the DS line is much more popular than the PSP line.
March 21, 2011 at 4:12 PMIt's really quite amazing to see how much this system has changed. I remember the old super Nintendos and even the old Game Boy. And now we have Nintendo DS, and Wii! It's insane to see these changes have happened.
March 24, 2011 at 3:20 PMNo I agree he needs a job--
March 27, 2011 at 8:48 AM"but I am just going to have to wait for it to drop in price (which may take years) or win the lottery. I’m sure I’ll eventually get one, but it may take a while"
I mean your willing to pay lets say 200 for the system, so your saying its gonna take something like winning the lottery to save up another 50 bucks?? Or wait two years for a price drop of... 50 bucks???
Just don't eat out once or twice-- when has 2 years seemed liked a short time compared to spending 50 bucks!??!
I don't know about the rest of you bitchy little pricks but I have to save up for months to get that kind of walking around cash with the current economy and I have a full time laboratory assistant job. It's not like I work at McDonalds, that's a lot of cash!
May 4, 2011 at 10:23 AMThe point of the article isn't that the game system is too expensive in general but that it is too expensive for a handheld game system. Come on Nintendo, you roll in the cash by selling the DS Lite for $130 but the new 3DS is $250?!? For those of you who don't like doing math that's a 52% increase in the price so that I can have a shittier battery life.
Maybe with your new smart phones who's battery life is about 4 hrs max you can justify that but I like to be able to play my DS on 5hr long plane flights from DC to California without worrying if I'm going to have to redo the last boss fight because I ran out of juice.
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