I have owned the newest Nintendo’s handheld console for a little more than a week. Here’s what it inspired in me…
The Irony in which we live is this: all those things that the industry throws our way to convince us they can still innovate and not just monetize, all those things may one day be remembered as mere gimmicks, blind alleys of gaming evolution, semi-forgotten urban myths that will be appearing on what-were-they-thinking lists of tomorrow.
So, the industry has lately been trying to push at least two things on us: motion control and stereoscopic 3D. This, they say, is the future. For the “hardcore” it’ll obliterate more barriers between you and your favourite pastime and create immersion you people (our people!!!) have been dreaming of since the cavemen were playing with their testicles one sunny Stone Age afternoon. You will be (almost) in the game itself and controlling it in (almost) natural ways. For the “casuals”, it’ll lower the barrier of entry – see it’s just like Avatar!!!! – and make them able to join in on the fun without having to master buttons and analogue thumbsticks – the traditional obstacles to fun mankind has been required to overcome – and statistically failed – since the dawn of time.
But seriously, while we weren’t looking, the actual innovation took place. While the industry continued to clutter our living space with yet more plastic shit, insisting we need all those cameras and sensors to detect motion and new television sets accompanied with special glasses, the… other part of the industry actually performed its own quiet (r)evolution festival and changed the landscape of gaming.
Because, seriously, if you think Killzone, Arkham Asylum, SPORE, Kinectimals or WiiSports are innovative, I would love to hear what the weather is like back in the middle ages where you apparently live. What we get from our traditional peddlers of digital fun is still more of the same with new coats of paint. Which is fine with me, by the way, I like at least two out of five games listed there, but what changed the gaming as the medium was other people figuring out how to use the fact that we are so much more connected today than we used to be yesterday.
Social networks, free to play MMO games, mobile phone games… this is what defines gaming culture of our age. It’s not Halo: Reach, it’s not Super Mario Galaxy 2, it’s not Heavy Rain and, hey, it’s not WiiSports Resort either. Microsoft can go on blabbering about making games mainstream with Halo all they like, traditional gaming is still niche. It’s a large niche, admittedly, but whoever thinks that Halo, Killzone or even Call of Duty could take on Farmville in a fistfight is delusional and a geek.
Look, it’s simple, you can’t beat simple, convenient and cheap. My wife used to play Unreal Tournament back in the day but in the last decade almost every shooter that she’s seen me playing has been described using the words “looks” and “boring”. You know how we usually joke that all shooters today look alike – grey and khaki colour palette, interchangeable human models, identical viewpoints, guns and recorded sounds – well this is what she has been seeing for more than ten years on her television and computer monitor screens. As far as she is concerned, I have been playing the same game since 1999 and she wants no part in it.
And yet she will happily squander hours playing Angry Birds. A colourful, fun game played with one finger, featuring awesome sound design, great physics and gameplay anyone can understand within twenty seconds of clicking on the desktop shortcut. It costs next to nothing and it provides a steady trickle of new content that also costs next to nothing. Why only last night I told her something along these lines: “You know, normally I’d RAGE about people making a game, then cutting it to pieces and then selling it to us one chunk at a time. But damnit if Rovio doesn’t get it right!!” I mean, I played way more Angry Birds and Tiny Wings than Dead Space 2 over the past three months, and I have spent scary amounts of money on Playstation 3 related hardware and software to ensure my living room gaming is good. Meaning I consider myself hardcore, whatever the HELL that means.
What does all this have to do with Nintendo 3DS? A lot. If I am reading the signals right, 3DS and Sony’s soon-to-come NGP may be the last traditional handheld consoles we ever own.
Nintendo has a history of being outrageously successful with their handhelds and in fact their handheld division is what kept their head above the water in the decade of Playstation’s (and later Xboxes) rise. Nintendo DS, launched seven years ago has been the most successful handheld console ever and the company has been determined to keep the things on the up and up with its successor. 3DS is basically keeping what was good about the DS – the shape, the dual screen setup, the touchscreen functionality, the connectivity – while adding sharper graphics and stereoscopic three-dimensional display visible to the naked eye. The technology just cutting edge enough to produce spontaneous geekgasms, combined with enthusiastic response of most major game publishers made a lot of “hardcore” gamers giddy with anticipation. The prospect of playing new Kid Icarus, new Resident Evil along with enhanced remakes of such classics as Snake Eater and Ocarina of Time, on a handheld, with proper 3D visuals – well those are legitimate grounds for excitement.
And yet, and yet… Nintendo has survived many a paradigm shift and today it is arguably stronger than ever, but the recent public hate crime Satoru Iwata, the company’s current President/ CEO committed by rather openly trash talking mobile phone gaming and claiming that cheapening of the market leads to loss of immersion and death of proper games (I’m paraphrasing, understand), this incident makes us wonder.
Because, really, in an era where literally millions of gamers play games for hours per day, every day on social networks or in browser based free to play persistent worlds, where gaming on the go means ninety nine cents games you can purchase and download anywhere, any time and, at least in cases of Tiny Wings, Angry Birds, Game Dev Story and… DoDonPachi (How’s that for hardcore, homies?) play for hours without pretending you care for what digital actors have to say and how the dialogue is directed, in that era, is it even possible for Nintendo to still sell us dedicated and admittedly pretty expensive gaming machine that is bigger than a smartphone, does less than a smartphone does on any weekday and sells us 50 Euro games (hey, that’s what they made me cough up for Pilotwings Resort) that we have to buy in plastic boxes in brick and mortar stores (and run the risk of seeing a sold out sign) or order online and wait for days (in my case weeks and months, because Hong Kong is FAR away)?
Well, they sold one to me, at least. And this is what I love and hate about it.
What I love about my cosmo black 3DS:
1. Shape and ergonomics
Well, I love my old white Nintendo DS Lite, so seeing how my new black Nintendo 3DS (that we will no doubt be calling “phat” in a matter of years) looks almost exactly the same but has leaner lines, better quality plastic, bigger screens and great quality buttons makes me feel good about Nintendo’s designers. They know just about enough not to change the winning formula and 3DS keeps the logical functionality its predecessor had, managing to add new stuff along the way. The audio and 3D sliders are positioned well, the new places for Select and Start buttons make sense, the Home button does what you imagine it should be doing and there’s still room for WiFi and power switches that somehow manage to never be pressed if you didn’t mean it. Meanwhile, while the D-Pad is now positioned a little awkwardly, the thumbstick (called “circle pad”, I’m guessing just because assholes like me will automatically think “more like circle jerk, amirite!!!”) more than makes up for it in quality. I’ve read reports of people saying their D-Pad or screen hinges were squeaky, but my machine has been giving me nothing less than crispy, perfect performance in the week since I have bought it.
2. Graphics, audio and 3D
I am in no way what people would call “graphics whore” (for one, I would never have intercourse with a man I don’t fancy in exchange for just some Hi-Res screenshots) but it is nevertheless lovely seeing higher definition images accompanied with solid framerate on a Nintendo handheld. To be sure, as a Nintendo DS owner who is also a PSP owner, I have enjoyed lovely graphics on a portable device for ages now, but, one important truth to remember here is that the best handheld games usually do not feature the best graphics. Sure, I love Dissidia and I thought that Peace Walker was awesome but to be honest my favourite PSP games are sprite based – Patapon, LocoRoco, Tactics Ogre, Cladun… So, I love sharp images and enhanced 3D rendering that 3DS offers but that alone in no way means the games featuring awesome graphics will actually be awesome.
Meanwhile, I am more than cold when it comes to stereoscopic 3D. I hate going to the movies and having to wear heavy glasses over the glasses I wear all day anyway, I hate seeing the film in a darkened, less clear quality, I hate the strain it puts on my eyes. So I am definitely in no hurry to buy a 3D-capable telly and go back to Killzone 3 just so I can lose the level of detail and shave a few FPS off the total in exchange for having to duck when Higs try to stab me in the face with their cockney accented, sharpened nazi dicks.
But with 3DS it kinda works. Sure, it took me about a day and a half to train my eyes to not hurt the second they tried to make sense of the illogical images in front of them and excitedly shaking the console while playing Street Fighter made the 3D magic fail epically, but now I am sort of comfortable with it. It really does make things look lovely on occasion and while I am fully aware it is but a gimmick (whatwith being able to turn the 3D off completely for every game) (meaning no gameplay can ever be based around 3D), at least it doesn’t irritate me. It’s like having higher resolution or more colours on your screen – you can do without it but it adds to the taste.
On a related note, the DS featured good speakers but their maximum volume was really low. 3DS produces sound of a notably better quality and now it is also loud enough that you can hear it over your own excited breathing. As soon as someone cracks the device and finds the way to enable it to play 3D pr0n, we’ll be in major business.
3. Enhanced functionality
Nintendo always maintains that their devices are gaming machines and the rest of the world can have their social networks integration and video playback and Internet, but with 3DS they at least packed some stuff into the dashboard that’ll make sure the average user will have something to keep herself happy even if he doesn’t like any of the games available in the launch window. After all, Nintendo is fully aware that many (most?) of the Wii owners never purchased any games, perfectly content having only WiiSports that came pre-packaged with the console.
No, 3DS does not offer anything on the same scale, but it does keep you amused with a bunch of stuff. The machine has no less than three cameras. The front facing one is a plain old camera while the two rear cameras allow the user to take grainy, lo-res and yet amusing three dimensional images. To be sure, these are only a tiny bit better in quality than “holographic postcards” you remember from your childhood (at least I do) (barring the possibility that all the childhood memories I have and treasure have merely been inserted into my clone brain by a sinister International organisation) but testing them on non-geek population gave me some spectacular results. My colleagues at the International meeting I attended in Hungary last week rated me somewhere between Bruce Lee and Galactus when I showed them their own mugs in 3D.
There is also a sound recorder that allows you to play back the audio captured through the microphone and dick around with its pitch. Why? Who knows, but my grindcore vocalising sounds even better when it appears to have been produced by a rabid chipmunk.
You can also suspend games (and any other software you happen to be running) at any time and go to the dashboard to take notes. Again, I have no idea why you would want to do this – after all, our war against adventure games was won years ago – but it’s nice of Nintendo to offer. The hint here is that you shouldn’t get too trigger happy with suspending stuff because, if you think you can freeze the game and then go to the dashboard to take some 3D photos of your mighty killing-induced erection, think again (that is, IF you can think with all your blood redirected to assist in nobler business). Launching anything else from the dashboard turns whatever was suspended off. Which sucks. My wife’s iPhone is better at multitasking and Allah knows iOS devices have always been lambasted for not being able to multitask. Oh well…
This console also lets you exchange identities with other 3DS users over the Internet, using friends codes tied to the machine (rather than to a game, as was the case with DS), which we applaud. It also has machine-based street pass capabilities as well as the ability to download firmware updates in a passive state (spot pass). Of course, anyone letting their machine update itself without so much as a warning deserves all the bad things that happen later, but Nintendo is at least trying to make you comfortable in your stupidity.
I have not yet tested the Augmented Reality games that demand the use of printed cardboard cards that Nintendo supplied with the machine but I have to say that printing “free” on the package that is part of the package you actually, you know, paid for, somehow sounds, you know – cheap.
But I have played Face Raiders and this is Nintendo in fine form. This is the Augmented Reality game that comes with its own slot in the dashboard and it demands you to take photos of faces of people around you that then turn into invaders of your personal space. Using the rear facing cameras, the game superimposes waves of attacking heads on the backdrop of your living room and instructs you to shoot all of them, bossfights and all. While nowhere near the depth you’d demand from a boxed game, Face Raiders is exactly what you want to show people wondering what the machine can do. Watching my friends run around my apartment, 3DS in hand, shooting mugshots of my cats (I only had them available initially) and screaming like crazy is what the new handheld console experience should all be about. Face Raiders is gaming in its purest form.
Also, download-play seems to now be available for many more games than it was the case with DS, but we will have to test this thesis once more games are on offer and once we meet anyone else owning a 3DS.
The machine also has activity log which is nice, a pedometer and a gyroscope. Let’s leave it at that.
4. Games
So far, I have only bought three games and this has as much to do with the low quality of distribution for Nintendo-related software we get in this country as with the fact that some people claim this is the weakest launch window selection of games ever. Actually, out of the three, two were purchased in Hungary and it’s difficult for me to agree that a lineup featuring Super Street Fighter IV and a new game by Julian Gollop can be described as anything less than encouraging.
I love Super Street Fighter IV and its 3DS iteration is still awesome. That it can be played online is nothing short of phenomenal but then again, this is exactly what we should be deeming minimum requirement of a current generation dedicated gaming hardware. I hope this becomes proper standard for future 3DS games – unlike what the situation with PSP turned out to be in the end – and that words “ad hoc” are only used to describe casual sex in the years to come.
Also, Julian Gollop. Honestly, I would probably never buy a launch title for a new platform with words “Ghost” and “Recon” featuring heavily in it (because I hate Ubisfot is why, you nosy pricks) but Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars is the new game made by a man who gave us X-Com and there’s no arguing about whether you should own it. Sure, it features a silly storyline and, stereoscopic 3D aside, looks like an ugly DS game, but here we’re talking heaven when it comes to modern turn based tactics. Buy it.
5. Backwards compatibility with DS
Nintendo knows I still have a ton of DS games I haven’t completed so the first iteration of 3DS allows us to use the old cartridges and play the games with or without stretching the image. This will no doubt be removed in the future revisions of the hardware but as a launch model gesture, I applaud it. Moreover:
6. Flashcarts for DS work on 3DS
Sure, sure, now the bigots among you are inhaling and getting ready to scream “PIRATE!!! GET HIM!!!” but the fact is that I own more DS games than you do. At the same time, it’s simply not convenient to carry more than one or two games while travelling, due to their bulky plastic boxes so having twenty or thirty of them backed up on a SD card has always worked well for me when I travelled for business or pleasure. Add the odd emulator or two for older systems and you’ll understand why I am happy that all this still works on 3DS (bar the ability to play ripped 3DS games… yet). Of course, Nintendo will probably patch this out as soon as they can through a firmware update and then I’ll hate the tits off them. Until the card manufacturers find a way to circumwent the protection and so on ad infinitum…
And with that, I think we should move on and try and list the other things:
The things I hate about my cosmo black 3DS:
1. Missing features
Sure, being able to record my own voice and take 3D shots of my penis is lovely but a machine that has reasonable Internet capacity comes without a browser or an online shop. In 2011 for Allah’s sake!!!
With DS, these things have been stupid but excusable and both were added in the later iterations. But with 3DS this is completely inexcusable. The machine comes with cameras, speakers and a microphone, a dedicated 3D screen and a virtual keyboard and yet you give me no option to surf the web or have video chats with people??? Are you insane, Nintendo? Are you actively trying to force me to remember that mobile phones offer all of these things as well as games that cost fifty times less than your games?
Sure, Nintendo announced adding these features (well, browser and online shop at least… hot and sweaty Skype chat will probably have to wait for hackers to patch it in) in a later firmware update but seriously, if you couldn’t get it up for launch, how dedicated do you think you look to us?
What’s worse, digital distribution systems for both DS and Wii have been pretty abominable so far, offering a highly debatable selection of (region exclusive) games for highly debatable prices. Are we to believe that Nintendo has learned from Apple or even Sony and Microsoft in the meantime and that 3DS shop will actually be worth our time and not look like something that accidentally fell out of Sheitan’s own rectum? Just like Sheitan, I’ll believe it when I see it.
2. Battery life
It may sound like I am complaining about insignificant little features here but battery life is one of major features for a handheld device. I do a lot of my portable gaming on the move and the main reason my DS has been getting more game time than my PSP is simply that its battery holds longer. PSP is a bit of a joke anyway, more demanding games sucking my “special” extended 2200 mAh battery dry in two hours flat. Well, for 3DS Nintendo announced somewhere between three and five hours, depending on the setup. Playing with my screen brightness on level three (out of five), with WiFi off and sound halfway up (only 3D slider maxed) I get between three and four hours. Which is pretty crappy. If I have to spend two hours on an airport and then three hours flying I am basically fucked, and that’s before we even take in the possibility of wanting to surf the Internet or have audio chats somewhere down the line.
What pisses me off the most is not that Nintendo couldn’t make a better battery without setting our underwear on fire, but the fact that third party battery enhancers have been on offer since before launch day. Nintendo could have licensed one of those products and packaged it with the console. That would have shown they cared and would go a long way towards justifying the 300 Euro price tag I was smacked with on launch day.
What Nintendo included instead is… wait for it… a Charging Cradle. A useless piece of plastic that demands a power cord to be plugged into it before placing your 3DS on top. Useless simply because you can still plug the cord directly into the console. Thank you for wasting more of the planet’s resources on redundant slabs of plastic, Nintendo, and giving them names that will remind us why we didn’t want to have babies in the first place.
3. Region locking
By far the worst of the new features, the decision to for the first time in their history produce a region-locked handheld gaming device shows that Nintendo hate us. Not just the general public, the average sixpack Joe who couldn’t tell a difference between WiiFit and WiiFit Plus even if the difference punched him in the guts, but US, the people who read websites like this one, the self proclaimed hardcore.
There must be a logical explanation for this but unless it is something along the lines of “We hate your stupid face and we hate your filthy money even more”, its logic might not make sense. Seriously, why??? People take these things with them all the time, you want them to take them along for walks and trips (hence the pedometer and the spot pass and the street pass etc.) but should they buy games not tagged for their region on their travels, they will be useless.
The problem is enhanced between twenty and fifty times when you have in mind how difficult it is to obtain certain games in certain countries. Where I live some games never come into shops, some games never come to the continent and Amazon, Google, Play and most other online game distributors will not ship to my country. Seriously.
So, most of the time I’d order my DS games from Hong Kong, usually paying between 60 and 100 dollars a piece. You’d think that my taste in games must be bordering on perverse and that most of my purchases from Play Asia are merely Japanese dating sims but no. How about Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes that took three months to come to Europe after its North American release (published as it is by a European company. And you wonder why I hate Ubisfot). No? You say I could have waited? OK, then, how about Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey that has been out in North America since March 2010 and is still not out in Europe? Or how about Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor? This game came out in North America in June 2009 and never came out in Europe. Hell, the Japanese enhanced version for 3DS is announced for June 2011 with the European version having no date at all.
Without being able to purchase these games from Asian distributors, in their North American versions, I would have never purchased these games. I could have still played them – using less than popular means such as flashcarts and pirated ROMs – but neither Atlus, nor Ubisoft, nor Nintendo would have got my money for them. But they did. With 3DS games being region locked, I will not be buying any more American releases. And the thing is I still don’t understand why. It can’t be piracy protection, this is exactly what makes people pirate games in the first place. Nintendo seem to be actively trying to push enthusiasts away from their newest device by offering more features where it is really a matter of “would be nice to have them” but absolutely dropping the ball where it counts. When this thing gets hacked you can bet one of the first things people do will be circumventing region locking (right after ensuring you can capture video of the user’s penis in glorious 3D).
To add insult to injury, (and I haven’t been this insulted or injured since John Romero instructed me to suck it down) my first attempt to play Super Street Fighter IV online ended up with a message “This service is not available in your region” which really made me scream. So you sell me games but you will not let me use the features, Nintendo (because, sure as shit, this is Nintendo, not Capcom having sex with a canine partner right there)? Really? REALLY? And I appreciate that my country is little more than a dung stain on the road to progress, but I’ve seen Polish gamers saying that for them the only way to play online is to do like me, lie that they are from the UK in the system settings and then have awesome, lag free Street Fighter matches online. Not a major problem there, sure, unless you count outright lying while accepting terms of use and lately we have learned how important those are when corporations take you to court.
In conclusion? I am glad I have this machine and I am sure I will have many happy hours with it, even before the inevitable sex chat with sweaty, overweight men gives an entirely new meaning to the term 3D. But Nintendo hate us with a passion that rivals only their contempt for our passion and their hatred combined with their obvious disregard for all things modern might backfire this time around. See you around the time 3D video chat becomes reality or Zelda comes out, whichever comes first.
Email the author of this post at meho@tap-repeatedly.com
Nice impressions.
I too am a 3DS owner since last week. Personally, I’ve got to say I’m loving the device. I’m not totally “sold” on 3D yet (my first impressions are that yeah, it’s totally a gimmick rather than a game changer, although I’m OK with good gimmicks), but Im fine with it’s inclusion on the 3DS.
Even 3D aside though, I feel like the 3DS is a genuine and logical step up from the DS. It’s got an OS which is functional and packed with smart features, and I think the graphical leap is justifiable almost in itself.
One thing I can’t agree with you on is with your concerns about functionality such as video chat and a web browser. A web browser is coming, sure, and when it does I will proceed to ignore it just as I do that of the PS3 or other devices that shoe horn a browser into their product because they feel they have to. I have a phone, an iPad and 2 home computers which all do web browsing better than the DS did. I’m not really sure under what circumstances I’d ever need browsing or video chat through my 3DS, and I don’t think 3D would be any less of a gimmick for such matters as it is for gaming.
I dunno. For me, the 3DS feels focused with what it’s doing. I pick up my 3DS to have a blast on some games, not anything else. Certainly not because I want to browse the internet.
The one thing thats really grating on me about the 3DS is the low res cameras. They’re serviceable for Augmented Reality games, but for actual photographs they’re a waste of time. It’s a shame, because taking 3D photos is cool and the results are pretty neat, but it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to me. They could have really knocked the ball out of the park with the 3D photography but.. they haven’t. Maybe in a future revision.
I do agree with your other points. Region locking isn’t a huge deal for me personally, and as someone who predominantly uses their hand held at home I haven’t had any issues so far, but yeah, I get why others find this a problem. The battery life thing is a bitch, but hey, technology is evolving quicker than battery technology is. The only “mobile device” that I find the battery to be even tolerable for extended use with is my iPad. But the iPad is over 9 inches in size (oo err) and is all battery inside. It’s basically a battery with a screen on it. That’s not an excuse, but I’d argue it will prove to be competitive in the long term. The iPhone will give you less juice if you run Infinity Blade none stop.
Other than that.. good points Meho. I was going to write a first impressions piece myself this week but I’m not sure if it’s worth it now! Haha!
Also (and sorry to double comment) – Nintendo have specified that the delay to get the online stores to Market is down to an acknowledgement that they sucked absolute ass on the DS and Wii.
Whether you buy that as an excuse is down to the individual, I guess. Personally I don’t know why they couldn’t have realised this some time ago and worked on it in advance of the 3DS’ launch.. but hey, they are at least aware of it, and they are taking the time to make sure what they launch, they launch in a state which is acceptable.
It’ll be interesting to see if they achieve this, having made their intentions to improve the service public.
To be honest, I don’t need a browser that badly except when I do. To me not having one on a 3DS means I won’t be taking the machine with me when I am not sure I will be playing. That in turn means that I won’t be browsing the Internet on a bus/ plane/ whatever, learning about new games and buying them on the same device as I would do on a telephone. I think it’s a major failure to acknowledge just how much the portable gaming landscape has changed.
I mean, I purchased Street Fighter IV literally four times (Xbox 360 version, PS3 version, PS3 version of SSFIV, 3DS version) and paid around fifty Euro each time, but I am a dying breed. People who play on the move will not spend over 200 Euro on one game.
Anyway, do your first impressions by all means. This was just a kind of a hate f**k.
Fair play. If that’s a direct impact on your mobile gaming life then who is anyone to disagree. At is point however, it’s a problem which is only going to be a problem at all for a couple of months. The browser is coming. I’ve little faith in it being of sufficient quality to dislodge my iPhone as my mobile browser of choice, but it will be here in some form anyway.
Something else to *possibly* consider is that unlike a smartphone, the 3DS doesn’t support a constant 3G connection. I’m not sure what the WiFi support is like in your area, but whe I live (which is the fourth largest City in England, so not exactly a black hole), the WiFi access is pretty terrible. I consider my iPad a mobile device, but it’s left my house only a handful of times in the year that I’ve had it, because internet access when relying on WiFi where I am is just a joke. If it had a constant 3Gconnection then.. yeah, sure. This may be different depending on other peoples locations/public net access.
The portable gaming landscape has changed significantly, and I think Nintendo would be naive and possibly stupid to ignore this in the extreme. For a lot of people, being able to play Angry Birds on their phone is all they need from a portable gaming experience. Incidentally, I think many of those who this applies to will also be those who bought a DS however many years ago to play Nintendogs or Brain Training. Despite this though, I think Nintendo will be OK. Long term, I think Nintendo will still be able to create, market and sell enough products to enough people to make a success of the 3DS. They’ve made a pretty good start selling me a unit on launch, because up until now portable gaming has never been my forte at all.
For what it’s worth I think Sony need to be the most cautious with regards to the current gaming climate. Nintendo can still sell franchises that have proven popular for years to a huge cross section of people, and now they can even sell a 3D gimmick. But Sony? They need to be cautious with the NGP..
The fact is I don’t even own a smartphone. My telephone is a six or seven years old Nokia brick I was issued by my office and since I don’t really need to do anything but make phonecalls on it, I never even thought about purchasing a proper phone. So for me, having an Internet ready device that would allow me proper surfing and chat would be helpful. Now I appreciate I am an extreme minority here, still, my logic is – if the thing CAN do Internet then make it do Internet well. PSP and PS3 have atrocious web browsers that I only use when absolutely forced to and DS/ 3DS always struck me as machines perfectly suited to surfing and chatting due to dual screens and virtual keyboard with a built in stylus.
As for WiFi/3G, I mostly talk about using my gaming devices in Hotels and on Airports as this is where most of my gaming on the move takes place. These locations are usually covered by free WiFi networks. I have never in my life used a 3G connection as I have no devices capable of doing so. My wife just came back from a week long trip to London and she kept the 3G on her iPhone switched off all the time due to the good WiFi coverage she was reportedly experiencing.
It definitely remains to be seen how it all plays to the end with the rise of smartphone gaming in the period since DS launched. I feel that Sony are having a good idea with their twin approach to handheld gaming (Xperia Play Phone and NGP which are both android-capable and have dedicated online shops) and that Nintendo are falling behind the times. But then again, this is exactly what we were saying around the original PSP launch…
Yep. It depends how the market plays out, really. Sony’s PlayStation certification process for Android is one of the smartest things they’ve done in a long time, and while I don’t think the Xperia Play is going to be the best hardware to push that, it certainly shows Sony have themselves ready and in a position to slot into the existing trends. It could be key to the NGP’s success. I’d argue that every concern here regarding the 3DS and mobile gaming is amplified slightly for the NGP, given the experiences they’re selling and the price they’re likely to ask for it. Android and PlayStation Certification could be key to what they do.
For what it’s worth I agree that this could be the last time we see a dedicated handheld launch. The mobile gaming market is obviously huge and the technology moves relatively quickly. In the interim though, I’m happy to be on board with Nintendo. I’m already getting experiences from the 3DS that I don’t get from my iPhone, and while DoodleJump is the sort of thing I play on the toilet for a minute (I can’t stand Angry Birds), Pokemon Black, Super Street Fighter IV 3D and Pilotwings are the games I sit and invest my time into. I’m hoping (and do still believe) that right now there are enough gamers out there who do still want those experiences from their portable hardware. 60+ hour handheld RPG’s should be able to co-exist with Angry Birds as the market stands right now, in my opinion.
I don’t for a second expect the 3DS to sell anywhere near as many units as the DS did, however. I think if either console reaches 60 million units is time around (which incidentally is what the PSP shifted, despite being branded a “failure” by many) then they will be seen as a success.
“60+ hour handheld RPG’s should be able to co-exist with Angry Birds as the market stands right now, in my opinion.”
Quoted for righteousness. This is exactly what I’d like to see when Nintendo finishes developing the online store for 3DS, a perfect balance between traditional hardcore gaming (epic RPGs, deep fighters, complex action adventures, massive puzzlers) and instant gaming experiences a la Angry Birds, Tiny Wings and Doodle Jump. The hadware is perfectly suited for it so Nintendo just needs to get the finger out and stop with the “we don’t rate garage developers” attitude.
But I am really scared their certification process will make this impossible. That way I’d say Sony is a little better positioned in terms of future proofing their next gen handhelds. They dropped the ball hard with the Minis programme for PSP (even though they published Angry Birds on it too) and I think they understand the game better now. But, yes, the asking price for NGP might kill it dead on arrival. I don’t really think I need to play Uncharted and Resistance games on a handheld, I mean I’ll take them if they’re good, but I’d love to see Sony finally understand that it was Patapon and LocoRoco that kicked all sorts of arse on PSP, not God of War (even tough GoW games on PSP were pretty good).
Agreed also. The problem I always had with the PSP is that whenever I used it, I always thought I’d enjoy what I was doing more on a home console. I’m a bit of a Metal Gear nut, so I sure do want to play Peace Walker. I’m.. just not sure if I want to play it on a PSP.
I think it’s unlikely at this point that Nintendo will open up to garage developers as they put it, but they do have other avenues to get a similar program to work. There’s a vast back catalogue of handheld goodies at their disposal, and I’d love to have access to the Game Boy, GBA and Game Gear libraries all stored and ready to go at any time on the 3DS. As long as the price is right.. which it almost certainly won’t be! I wanted the PS3 to be my one stop shop for everything Sony have ever produced and that didn’t exactly turn out so well..
You’re spot on about the Minis range, too. I’m sure I’ve talked about that in one of my PSP articles before. Having Angry Birds is fine, as a rare and pretty unique example of an iOS game becoming so huge, but Sony totally missed the point of the ecosystem that allowed Angry Birds to get that point in the first place..
Fantastic impressions, Meho. I don’t play much on handhelds (the last game I played on my DS was Chrono Trigger), so I’m missing this party but enjoying all the commentary on the system.
Excellent read Meho. Really covered just about everything. This is the kind of info I like to get before purchasing expensive hardware with which to take 3D pics of my penis.
I agree on all your points Meho. Great article. Region locking is just bizarre. It’s surely got to be for tax reasons or consumers paying more in various countries due to conversion rates? (£40 for a game in the UK!).
Personally I’d love a browser in the 3DS, but knowing Nintendos track record it will be terrible. They might be advanced in some things, but their web support is so shit it’s laughable. If the 3DS’s browser is anything similar to the original DS they’ve blown it, which let’s face it is a high possibility.
I mean, they withdrew microphone support from Monster Hunter Tri, their most prominent online Wii game (and a bloody big seller!). Lets just stress this: an online MMOG, with no microphone support!
By the way Meho, something I just picked up on..
Do you still expect them to drop backwards compatability with the DS? Bearing in mind the cartridges are the same size and slot into the same port? I know GBA compatability was dropped from the DS in later revisions, but that required a whole different port in the back of the system. Unless running DS games causes a whole heap of hassle at software level, which I’m not sure it does, I think it’s relatively safe to assume they’ll keep the functionality in there long term..
“I’m a bit of a Metal Gear nut, so I sure do want to play Peace Walker. I’m.. just not sure if I want to play it on a PSP.”
Well… as a potential solution you can always connect your PSP (2000 and upwards) to your telly and play the game on its screen. I have only had a phat until recently, and that’s where I played Peace Walker on, but having purchased a 3000 in the meantime, I might give it another spin. Peace Walker is pretty awesome.
“Sony totally missed the point of the ecosystem that allowed Angry Birds to get that point in the first place..”
Yes, pretty much what I was trying to hint at. And pretty much what I expect Nintendo to do too. They missed the opportunity with WiiWare and VC and DSiWare and let’s see if they can get it on a rebound with… 3DSWare or whatever it’s going to be called. I mean, ultimately I don’t (have to) care, I can always purchase an Android phone and knock myself out, but the potential is there and I’d love them to use it.
“This is the kind of info I like to get before purchasing expensive hardware with which to take 3D pics of my penis.”
Because if our penises don’t deserve the best, who does?
Lewis, I still have no idea how’s region locking supposed to help the publishers or the platform holder. There was a kind of an article on IGN months ago that tried to explain how this is justified from the business side of things but… it didn’t really give us any proper arguments.
Quite frankly, at least where I live, importing games from another region is always the more expensive route. Not because the games themselves are more expensive (they’re not, for DS games for instance it’s 35 dollars import versus 35-40 Euro locally) but because the import costs inflate the price quite a bit. As I said, importing from Hong Kong made the games cost up to one hundred dollars for me, when shipping and customs tax costs were included. So, importing games, for me at least is not the cheaper or more convenient route, it’s the only way to buy the games that were never published in Europe (for instance the SMT titles I mention in the article). Also, my country is notoriously bad when it comes to Nintendo platforms, so I also had to import stuff like Chrono Trigger that Steerpike mentions… So, in conclusion, deciding to region-lock 3DS is MAJOR problem for me. Sure I could always buy the North American console but that would really be going too far and giving Nintendo more undeserved money. As a result, I anticipate that I will be owning fewer 3DS games than was the case with DS…
“Do you still expect them to drop backwards compatability with the DS?”
Historically speaking, yes. With the exception of Wii, every console of the current generation did it at some point in time so… I am guessing they will be ditching it in an upcoming hardware revision and maybe give us better cameras or better battery life instead. It would make sense… But of course, I am no analyst and this is Nintendo so rules do not have to apply…
A great read, Meho.
And when it comes to three dimensional penis capture, size definitely matters.
I may have overdone the penis topic in this post. Then again, we ARE talking about man’s best friend…
Laugh out loud funny Meho, great stuff.
I’m a Firefox plugins freak so my internet browsing is so fully featured that I have trouble using pretty much anything else. I don’t have a smart phone or iThing so the net is something I’ve always accepted as a home activity even though I realise that everybody else and their mother browses while out and about. It’s not something I’d personally miss though.
Regarding the ergonomics, I hope that slight bevel along the bottom edge of the console will have alleviated the ‘corner sores’ issue of the DS. It was pretty much guaranteed that after a long session the palms of my hands would be red from where the corners rubbed against them.
The region locking is a real kick to the balls though. Probably the biggest for me. Both me and my girlfriend have had a fair few games from overseas which haven’t been released in the UK or are just a pain to get hold of but now that option has gone flying out of the window. It’s now UK released or bust. Great.
Hmm, I never had the problem with the edges/ corners of the DS. With the PSP yes, it sometimes cuts into my palms although I think my skin has adapted by now. Maybe my hands are extra hard?
But the region lock… the more I think about it the angrier I get. Atlus and Nippon Ichi games are usually difficult enough to come buy where I live. The fact that versions for other regions won’t be working on my 3DS really pisses me off… Accompanied with the shorter battery life it seems that two awesome DS features that I was kind of taking for granted are now gone and NOTHING has been able to fill that hole.
I don’t understand the thinking behind region locking a handheld. Especially at a time when other systems have broken down those barriers (PS3 says hi). For a handheld, where people who take their systems abroad or travel regularly, and thus might pick up localised games while they’re there, it seems incredibly short sighted. Then there’s importers like yourself..
It really isn’t a big issue for me on a wholly personal level as I very, very rarely import, but I totally get why it’s a frustration for others. Perhaps even a deal breaker.
Just seems odd from a company like Nintendo. Even Microsofts policy of leaving it to developer discretion has seemed backwards over the past 5 years, nevermind this in 2011.
Good one Meho – I’d be tempted to get one just for Ocarina of Time, and possibly Resident Evil… No sickness with the 3D-ness?
No sickness yet. I have played Shadow Wars extensively as well as Street Fighter and I am pretty pleased. I mean, the games themselves were expected to be awesome, but the 3D is pretty unobtrusive so far and even when I feel my eyes aching from the strain, I can easily turn it off. Also, online play in Street Fighter works better than I hoped for, almost as good as the console versions of the game.
Meho, what do you think of Shadow Wars? My instincts told me to avoid everything by Ubisoft at launch, but there’s a lot of love out there for this. As good as Street Fighter is technically, I’m not getting an awful lot of joy out of it at the moment due to how poor I am at the game. I hear Shadow Wars is pretty lengthy, too.
I’ve not experienced any problems with the 3D either, although this is largely because I’ve found my sweet spot with all the software I own. Comfort levels differ for literally every game so the slider quickly becomes your best friend on the hardware. The only time I’ve become disorientated was a single instance in Pilotwings when attempting to land on a floating target with the rocket pack. For some reason I tend to loose focus really easily when trying to do this, to the point where I have to look away or switch the 3D off completely. Other than that, the rest of Pilotwings and every other game I’ve played have all been absolutely fine.
I love Shadow Wars unconditionally. I mean, let’s face it, Gollop could have basically reskinned Laser Squad or X-Com and I would have paid full price for either (or both), but Shadow Wars is refined and streamlined and I love it. It’s really all I want from the new – or any – generation of handheld gamign devices: smart tactical turn based games with save anywhere feature hardfuckingcoded.
Shadow Wars is also pretty careful about easing the player into it. The first couple of hours the game just shows you the ropes and it is virtually impossible to fail the mission and then it starts getting gradually more challenging and you realise that you have to actually use everything you’ve learned up to that point and that what you thought were unfair advantages you had are merely tools to barely survive in real combat. Contrast this with X-Com where you basically get raped the second you step out of the vehicle. In short, I love it. Ubisoft certainly aren’t my fave publisher these days and I for the most part don’t care about their Ghost Recon franchise but this is a classical example of an iconic developer taking the opportunity to do what he does best and using the corporation’s backing to do it. This game could never exist on a home console in 2011 and even on PSP it would have to fight the awesome turn based monsters like Valkyrie Chronicles and tactics Ogre, but on 3DS it’s perfect.
As for the Street Fighter, well, I find it very good. The best transition of a current gen arcade fighter to a handheld ever done as far as I am concerned. Excellent controls, extremely good framerate and surprisingly solid online play. I am far from being great at Super Street Fighter IV (on PS3 I usually lose one out of five matches online) but I enjoy it a lot and even online I get to win quite a lot.
[…] jer sam lenj. Na Tap-repeatedly! sam već objavio svoje prve impresije o 3DS-u, pa koga ne mrzi, može da ih čita. S druge strane, sada, posle više od mesec dana na tržištu, neke su stvari jasnije. 3DS nije […]
about the
3. Region locking
the reason is quite stupid: some games rated as 10+ maybe rated as 18+ on other country or vice versa.
or even 21+.
well if that is the problem, rate everything foreign as 21+, problem solved.
they were stupid.