Hardware Nintendo 3DS Review

It seems that if Nintendo didn't make such a big deal about the 3D aspect of the 3DS the reviews would have been nicer all round, only complaining a little about the battery life and the poor quality of the initially released games. The screens are higher resolution, the menu is nicer (flashier), and the control system is improved. It just happens to have the ability to show the games in 3D if you want.

Maybe future releases will be able to take better advantage of the 3D effect, but for now I'm sure early adopters will be happy with the improved resolution and control stick.

Still, I'll be waiting for the 3DS XL.

 

Complaining a little about battery? 3 hours is pathetic, and even if you turn off all the radios and 3D you get 5. My DS Lite is still happily putting out 12-14 hours of playtime on a single charge.

 

The battery charge is an issue but when you think the 3DS is powering 2 screens it makes a little more sense. Not much comfort in that I guess but I'm not sure I want to have that cross-eyed 3D feeling for 3 straight hours anyway. Maybe an hour at a time at most with breaks ...

 

Nothing happened to them. As it was five years ago, it's still just me doing nearly all of the games coverage. There's only so long I can sustain staying in the office until 11PM to do a 10 page game review every other day (which will be rendered obsolete by the first week-one patch and essentially restates information that we know nobody was actually spending time reading), especially when my personal life is taking the brunt of the damage - and believe me when I say it's taken a lot of damage.

We operate better now. There's no '5-page minimum' for every game we cover. We say what we think needs to be said, rather than waffling to fill a wordcount. Games that need it can have 10 page reviews, while simpler ones can have less. Chime is a great example of a game we covered and loved recently, but wouldn't otherwise have written about five years ago purely because I wouldn't have had enough to say about it.

If you look back at those 'old game reviews' you seem to like so much you'll see they weren't written any better and often spoke in obvious genericisms. Is 5 pages of 'BioShock's water effects look better if you set the Water Quality to High, but you shouldn't do this unless you have a good graphics card' really new, essential information? We'll cover that stuff when it's warranted (as we are doing now with Crysis 2), but not otherwise. The absence of battery life testing is, as I said above, an oversight.

 

Almost all games work, bar any that need the GBA slot on the DS/DSL - basically if it works on the DSi it works on the 3DS.

The 3DS's top screen is wider than the DS - the system deals with this by adding back bars to each side of the top display. The colour depth seems better, but I can only compare DSL screen quality as that is what I have, the DSi might have already made the improvement.

 

It does run existing DS games, but not in 3D. I couldn't notice a difference in visual quality, but as the review mentions the colour depth has been upped.
It does have an SD card slot (apologies, I thought that was clear from the images on page one).

 

I may consider getting one when prices are a little less insane. Paying £200 just for 3D seems a little silly to me.

 

Overpriced, underpowered gimmicky tat.......

But you have to hand it to Nintendo, no other company has mastered the art of dressing up end of life, bargain bin components in a shiny case and selling it for extortionate prices...

I mean, the Gfx chip powering this toy is a 2006 era mobile part , that never really got much of a market share, so no doubt Nintendo picked up the rights to use it for peanuts, and with such old tech, no doubt it costs peanuts to manufacture....

I dont know, is Nintendo clever, or is the consumer just plain dumb?....

 

If you do go back and review/talk about battery issues, would you please review one of the (if there's more than one) barttery extending accessories I've seen advertised?

 

I'm still cautious about the 3DS. I want to see the 3d effect for myself first, though if enough good rpgs come out exclusive to the 3DS, I might buy it anyway. I'm also annoyed about the method for activating the 1:1 option for backward compatibility - why should I have to hold start + select while launching a DS game? Is it that hard to move that into a settings menu, like the DS Lite (and I presume the original DS) option for which screen to show GBA games on?

 

I hadn't realised it was just you writing the reviews, and I agree that you shouldn't be sacrificing your life to the job. That said, why don't you get more support (aka: people) to do some writing and reviewing?

Yes, the system is better - but arguably, in cases such as the 3DS, there's clearly too little written. It's a £200 purchase, so people really want the details, rather than a quick review that omits key details. I'm all for removing waffle, and the word count limit, but doesn't mean every review should be short.

 

Agreed, but with console coverage such as this we're often held back by the nature of the platforms too. If this was a new graphics card, we'd go all out. As it is, there are no real benchmarks we can do - certainly nothing informatively comparable across systems in the line. I agree that there were some things we missed, such as battery life, but I think we've covered most of the bases at an acceptable level of detail.

Console reviews like this can never be viewed on their own, either. People don't just buy a 3DS because of the console, they buy it because of the games. That's why we don't score consoles - because so much depends on the games. And looking at those games is going to take longer and be beyond the scope of these articles.

 

Cheers Joe,

That's true, you can't review a console without games

 

Important question! Does the 3D effect work when you close one eye? My sister is blind in one eye (from birth) and she never has seen anything in 3D. It is sad trying to explain to her why she can't go to the new 3D movies. She thought it would work with the glasses, not knowing it just runs on frequencies switching your "views" and such...

So if anyone has it, or tried closing one eye, could you let me know if the 3D effect still worked?

Thanks A Lot!!

 

Joe is the 3DS using a TN panel or whatever crap the DS vanilla used? AKA with 3D off is their viewing angle problems from both screens? One of the biggest problems with the DS imo.

 

No info of what's in the box? No mention of motion controls?

 

Did you?

This will be a multi million unit sell worldwide. Don't be so naive to think it wont. read the review again and you will understand why.

 

Well Joe, I was going to ask why it didn't had a score but you've already answered it =)

I saw a AR from 3DS on a anime and thought it was quite tasty, if you know I what I mean x'D

 

No, it doesn't I'm afraid. It gives each eye a seperate image to create the 3D effect. This is why you can't view the 3DS at an angle.

 

Think I'll give the 3DS a miss until either they release the next chapter of the Pokemon franchise on it (which won't be for a year or so) or they do something about the price/battery life. I'm charging my DS lite once a week and getting 12+ hours out of it each time. My iPod Touch could never even dream of that kind of longevity.

It's kind of frustrating that Nintendo's biggest win on all of it's previous handheld consoles (battery life *has* to be good) has been traded away. Having briefly played with a 3DS in Gamestation last week, I was left dubious of how practical the 3D effect would during my daily commute by train and bus given the tiny volume of space you have to keep your head in in relation to the top screen.