August 2nd, 2010 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Platforms: DSiWare, Smartphones & Tablets | 1 Comment »
Last Thursday, we visited Nintendo’s Post E3 event in Holland. At the event, Nintendo had their new Nintendo 3DS on display. Actually, they also had the newest Wii and DS games there as well, but being an industry blog, we had to focus on what is really important.
First off, Nintendo promised us a full blown 3D gaming experience without the need of annoying 3D specs. In all honesty, the 3DS does exactly that but only for the one person that is playing on it. Though 3D visibility stays the same when moving the 3D screen vertically, 3D effects are totally lost when moving the screen horizontally.
That last bit is very important if you are planning to design a game based on the player moving in front of the camera (like the first downloadable WarioWare game on DSiWare). If you would make such a game in real 3D, the player would not be able to see much and Nintendo is likely to disapprove your game.
The 3DS features a slider that allows the player to specify the intensity of the 3D effect as well as to revert back to normal 2D. We experienced that having the slider somewhere in the middle serves the best effect.
The 3D and audio performance of the 3DS has been well above our expectations. One of the demo’s we have seen was that of Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D. This game previously launched on DVD for the PlayStation 2. The graphics where as good as I remember from the PS2 but of course in full 3D. Even the soundtrack was just great.A short play with Nintendogs+Cats as well as with Pilot Wings Resort showed us a great overall experience and very responsive hardware.
Another improvement to the DS based hardware is the availability of an analogue stick. Something Nintendo should have done with the first DS Lite hardware already. The analogue stick is very big compared to the PSP and PSP Go and we just love the sensitivity of it.
For the 3DS, Nintendo will continue to use memory cards, which in general is great for the loadingspeed of games. Nintendo will also bring TV and Movie content but hasn’t chosen if they will use memorycards for that as well or if it will be limited to downloads only.
The casing of the 3DS is much like any DS so far but what we held in our hands is all beta hardware. This means the finished product might be a bit different from what we have been playing with last week. Also, Nintendo could not tell us any details yet about how DSiWare will be involved in their strategy. There is no doubt DSiWare will be there.
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