I love you Nintendo, but...

WordsFinest proudly presents this editorial from recurring guest writer Keri.


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.

Thoughts on Nintendo's 3DS

Nintendo showed off a lot of stuff at E3 this year. The cream of the crop? A new Zelda, a Goldeneye remake, a killer Mickey Mouse game, Donkey Kong, and the most bitchin' Kirby game I've seen. There's so much I could write about, but the topic most worthy of discussion was the unveiling of Nintendo's new handheld: the 3DS.

Take Nintendo's incredibly successful DS handheld (above). Give it a better GPU. Swap out the top screen with a cutting-edge widescreen display capable of showing 3D illusions without the use of those tacky 3D glasses. For good measure, give it a joystick and some motion sensors. On paper, it doesn't sound that bad. And then I saw it...

Look familiar? Now I know, the DS was a great handheld. But it's a handheld that came out back in 2004. In 2006, they put it on a diet and gave it better lighting - we got the DS Lite. That's fine, the DS needed a better form factor and a decent back-light. Couple years after that, they gave it a camera and an SD card slot, and they called it the DSi. Okay, it seemed like overkill, but it was cool to finally have expandable memory for all those downloadable DS games Nintendo is putting out...oh wait. Last year, Nintendo's "new DS" was just a really big DSi - the DSi XL.

And so here we are, gearing up for another new handheld to launch in 2011. But really, Nintendo? We're still just gonna do another DS? I get it; it's got a better processor and people will no doubt gush when they see that bright, 3D display in action. And now we can finally waggle - because if there's one thing my Wii proved, it's that I like it when my games have to randomly guess at whether I'm trying to perform simple button actions with suggestive wrist motions.

But that's not the problem. The problem is the idea of the 3DS. It shows the arrogance of a company that thinks they can just rehash what they did in 2004. It's not enough to just put out a more powerful DS with a few more gimmicks tossed in. The landscape of portable devices has changed dramatically since the birth of the original DS. Back then, we were happy stuffing our pockets with our twenty-gig iPods, chunky Nokia cell phones, disposable wind-up cameras, and the occasional PDA. Now, it's become commonplace to carry just one or two devices in your pocket that have all of that functionality - plus the gargantuan utility of the internet. The phone has aggressively invaded the functionality of every other portable electronic device. So for me to carry something extra in my pocket, it has to justify its existence. I still carry my car keys and my wallet because those are items which my phone doesn't really replace yet. But if I'm going to carry a dedicated gaming device that has no other utility but to play games, it damn well better offer me a gaming experience I need and can't get from my phone.

The 3DS doesn't quite do that. Graphically, it's better than the old DS, but seemed underwhelming considering this is a platform Nintendo intends to support for at least five years. The fact that Nintendo is porting popular N64 titles to the 3DS (Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64) is slightly troubling. Kid Icarus looks great, but I have a hard time believing a smart phone wouldn't be capable of those graphics a year from now.

But forget graphics. Let's talk about the logistics of this "portable" game device. One of the great things about playing games on your phone or iPod is the sheer ease of acquiring and carrying games. I'm stuck somewhere and have a half hour to kill...good thing Plants VS Zombies is on sale, I'll just download that. Today, it's become weird not to buy mobile software (apps) through direct-download, but Nintendo is intent on keeping those plastic game cartridges. 

I'm sorry, but that's stupid - the very idea of a cutting-edge handheld that can only carry one game at a time is absurd. We no longer tolerate music players that can only hold one album at a time. The Kindle and the iPad are even persuading us not to settle for carrying just one book at any given time. To justify its place in your active life, a mobile device should be able to provide adaptable experiences for multiple situations. It's why you probably carry more than one genre of music on your iPod or phone - because you just never know when a Taylor Swift moment will hit you. If I'm in a situation where I could use just a five-minute diversion, I'm probably not gonna be happy about that 20-hour Final Fantasy game sitting in my 3DS. 

And that's assuming I'm even bringing the 3DS around with me. It's one thing that Nintendo wants me to carry around a device that is solely dedicated to games - that's okay, I enjoy games enough to be willing to do that. But considering how old the DS 'family' is, it's remarkable that each DS iteration is STILL the same basic size: too big. Hell, the last one got bigger. The 3DS has the same portability problems every other DS has: it fits ugly in the pocket. It's thicker and has a bigger footprint than just about any other portable device you'd consider carrying with you.

And for it's size, it's not even taking advantage of all that space. Look at that ridiculously thick bezel around the top screen - I'd rather see a regular 5" LCD making use of that space than a 3.5" screen with some 3D illusions. And why are the two screens so different? It's bad enough that they aren't the same size - but they aren't even the same aspect ratio! The top one is doing widescreen 16:9 while the bottom is doing regular 4:3. What's worse is that Nintendo completely ignored one of the biggest requests people had of the original DS hardware: the desire for two touch screens. Nintendo wanted to do something unique by giving us that 3D screen, but they could've given us the first mainstream portable device with two multi-touch screens. That would be unique and provide new game experiences.

There are so many other misguided decisions Nintendo made that I want to get into, but the point is simple: the 3DS will be an undoubtedly cool handheld that I might even purchase...but it's a device I have no desire to carry with me. And that's a pretty epic fail for any "mobile" device that runs on a battery. 

I truly love Nintendo and I will never stop buying Mario games. But I'm not the type of fanboy that thinks Nintendo is infallible. They recently had the audacity to say they were setting their sights on Apple's iPhone as a competitor. If Nintendo had come out with a system that is so fundamentally game-oriented that it doesn't even really compete with a phone, I'd be supporting them. But the 3DS does pick that fight with the phone, and it doesn't win. Like the iPhone, it wants to do music, movies, and browse the web. But for different reasons, you wouldn't want to do any of those things on your 3DS. At the same time, the 3DS falls short of being the true dedicated gaming device that could peacefully co-exist with your phone. Nintendo wants you to use the touchscreen, microphone, camera, and motion sensor to distinguish your game experience from the competition. But the phone you have likely has a better microphone, camera, and/or touchscreen than the 3DS. 

Nintendo could have tried to differentiate by making a truly sophisticated social gaming network - I'm really shocked they didn't even mention this. They practically invented casual gaming; they could have easily implemented something that combined the economies of Xbox Live with the casual-social games on Facebook (A more casual Pokemon would kick FarmVille's ass). Instead, they want you to pay $30-$40 for a cartridge-based game that probably won't take advantage of the 3DS's WiFi. What are you left with that really stands out? The 3D screen? Fundamentally, a 3D screen doesn't provide new game experiences  - it's only a way of visually enhancing the same Nintendo games we're already playing.

And that's the bottom line: All of us who end up buying the 3DS won't necessarily be doing it because it's a good - or even innovative - handheld gaming system. We'll buy it because we're willing to play Mario Kart on whatever Nintendo puts it on.

-Aaron