At E3, Nintendo will be introducing new hardware, the Nintendo 3DS.
In an official release, Nintendo describes the portable as allowing games to be "enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses". It is not yet known how the 3D effects will work, but it is possible that it could work like this Japan-only DSiWare game.
According to Nintendo, the product will go on sale between April 2010 and March 2011.
The Nintendo 3DS will succeeded the Nintendo DS series and will have backward compatibility for Nintendo DS and DSi games. It is important to stress that the Nintendo 3DS is a new hardware series.
In early January, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata gave an interview with Japan's second largest newspaper The Asahi Shimbun in which he apparently said the Nintendo DS successor will have "highly detailed graphics, and it will be necessary to have a sensor with the ability to read the movements of people playing".
Nintendo of America later told Kotaku that the Asahi Shimbun had "misinterpreted" Iwata's remarks. "Mr. Iwata did not make any comments regarding the functions of Nintendo's future hardware systems," Charlie Scibetta, Nintendo of America's senior director of corporate communications told Kotaku. "The answer to the reporter's question was misinterpreted."
The Asahi Shimbun stands by its reporting and issued a statement to Kotaku Japan that read: "The article quoted Nintendo President Satoru Iwata's comment accurately." The actual quote in the article is a fragment of a longer sentence.
At a Nintendo quarterly Q&A, the exec addressed the issue with the Asahi Shimbun, asserting that the reporter stated, "The graphics for the next DS will be highly detailed and it will contain a motion sensor, right?" Iwata claims he then replied, "Those things are naturally being required. But do you think it would sell with just that?" Iwata emphasized that this last part was left completely out.
It appears that the extra element Nintendo believed was necessary to really sell the DS successor is 3D.
Regarding 3D, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has previously stated that Nintendo would need to look into the "possible health effects" of playing video games in 3D for prolonged periods of time.
Here is a handy summary of what we know about the Nintendo 3DS (and what we think we know).
More Kotaku (the aforementioned summary from the above article) wrote:
Overnight, Nintendo made the surprising decision to reveal a new piece of hardware months outside of E3. Well, "reveal" might be too strong a word. "Barely mention" might be more appropriate, leaving us to fill in the gaps ourselves.
With curiosity being a driving human instinct, and Nintendo doing little to satisfy our need for answers with the briefest of press releases, we have to read between the lines to try and find out more about Nintendo's latest piece of portable hardware. So...let the line-reading commence!
What We Definitely Know
Here's the stuff that's explicitly stated in the press release.
- That a new handheld, called the Nintendo 3DS, will be released sometime during Nintendo's next financial year (Apr 2010 - March 2011).
- It will be capable of producing 3D graphics, without the need for 3D glasses.
- The 3DS will be backwards compatible with the entire line of Nintendo DS products.
- It will be properly revealed during the E3 trade show in Los Angles, which will take place in June.
What We Think We Know
There are a few more details we can glean from the information above. This isn't confirmed, just stuff we suspect based on supporting evidence.
- The 3DS will feature 2 cameras (If it includes support for DSi software, it'll have to)
- It's an all-new line of hardware, not simply a new model of the DS. Despite having the letters "DS" in the name, it's a working title, and the use of terms like "backwards compatible" and the fact it's succeeding the "Nintendo DS series" sounds a lot like this is the first of Nintendo's next generation of handheld gaming devices.
- It'll use those cameras to track the movement of the handheld and/or the player. That movement will then be used to display the 3D effects, similar to the way recent DSi title 3D Hidden Picture handles things. In support of this, in an interview with a Japanese newspaper earlier this year, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in relation to the company's next handheld "it will be necessary to have a sensor with the ability to read the movements of people playing".
And that's it! No further info, no pictures. We'll probably have to wait until E3 to learn more, but we'll update this post if we hear anything else.
Pic for title reference:
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