3DS post-release impressions *spawn

[Teasy]

I know this is a hardware thread but I don't see a thread in here to put this in so I'll put it here. Been playing with my 3DS all day. So far I'm most impressed by the camera and the AR games.

Mod: And you didn't think this was worth its own thread?! I shall correct this...

The golf/shot AR game is just incredible IMO, its very short but the possibilities it shows for AR on the system are amazing. My table top just morphs into a course, with water hazards ect and its so convincing and fun (obviously the 3D helps a lot there).

While the quality of the camera isn't great, the effect is brilliant, it makes the pictures look so deep. I'm especially enjoying inverting images so that everything pops out of the screen. Took a pic of a top down view of a bottle of lager earlier on and the 3D effect makes it look like the bottle is popping about 2 inches out of the screen Looks fantastic.

I only have one game ATM, Ridge Racer (which I got discounted with the system), I'm not a fan of racing games, but its still enjoyable. Though I think they could have done better with the 3D effect in this game, its just not as deep as I would have liked. I really want Street Fighter, but I might have to wait till tomorrow for that.

 

[JohnH]

I know this is a hardware thread but I don't see a thread in here to put this in so I'll put it here. Been playing with my 3DS all day. So far I'm most impressed by the camera and the AR games.

The golf/shot AR game is just incredible IMO, its very short but the possibilities is shows for AR on the system are amazing. My table top just morphs into a course, with water hazards ect and its so convincing and fun (obviously the 3D helps a lot there).

While the quality of the camera isn't great, the effect is brilliant, it makes the pictures look so deep. I'm especially enjoying inverting images so that everything pops out of the screen. Took a pic of a top down view of a bottle of larger earlier on and the 3D effect makes it look like the bottle is popping about 2 inches out of the screen Looks fantastic.

I only have one game ATM, Ridge Racer (which I got discounted with the system), I'm not a fan of racing games, but its still enjoyable. Though I think they could have done better with the 3D effect in this game, its just not a deep as I would have liked. I really want Street Fighter, but I might have to wait till tomorrow for that.

Hey Teasy,

how sensitive are you finding the hot spot for 3D?

Cheers,
John.

 

[Hardknock]

Thanks for the impressions Teasy. Let me know what you think of SF4. From what I've heard RR is one of the worst games for 3D.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Streetfighter IV is about as good as you could hope for a portable version of that game imo. Sure, the utterly motionless backdrops are a bit disappointing, but you hardly notice them while you play. The character models look gorgeous, though, and all the fancy ink effects and exaggerated facial animations are still there. It also looks super clean in both 2d and 3d, with hardly any signs of aliasing. The framerate drop in 3d is noticeable, but it isn't really a big hindrance. The controls are a bit iffy though, or at least I haven't gotten used to them yet. The d-pad sits in a really awkward position and is simply too tiny for my enormous paws, and the slide pad, while better than expected, just isn't quite fast enough for quick double presses.
The game is a well spring of features, by the way. Capcom really put the entire SSFIV in that little cartridge. Even the movies are all in there and all look excellent.

As for the system: the AR cards are indeed genious, and I'm loving myself a quick round of Face Raiders. I was also surprised about the quality of the built in speakers. The fidelity is surprisingly good, even if the max volume is rather low.

Thanks to the pedometer (that has nothing to do with little kids) I also know now that the place I work at is roughly 4800 steps away from my home.

 

[Teasy]

Hey Teasy,

how sensitive are you finding the hot spot for 3D?

Cheers,
John.

Well first of all I've found that its not a case of having to be in one exact spot to see the 3D. There seems to be 5 or 6 different locations (moving left to right accross the screen) where I can see the 3D effect. Right now I'm typing on my netbook with my 3DS about 6 or 7 inches to my left and if I look at the screen I can still see the 3D. However there's a transition between each one where you momentarily lose the effect and the best effect is from looking straight at the screen. Basically if your looking directly at the screen and you move your head or the system an inch left or right you'll see a transition and ose the effect for a second. I've only noticed this more then once or twice when I've actually been looking for it though. Moving up and down doesn't cause the same problem either.

As far as my experience with the 3D while gaming goes. Its Friday so most of the time I've been playing it I've been drunk But so far (after playing for 2-3 hours overall) I've noticed some slight ghosting occasionally in Ridge Racer. Only on the car in front though, not the whole image.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Gotta love Amazon. First they send you a code for a free game and then they still honor their lowest price guarantee. All in all I paid 260€ for a 3ds with 2 games instead of 250€ for just the hardware. That seems fair enough to me.

Today I took Street Fighter online for the first time, and it works absolutely fantastic. I'm also beginning to get used to the controls. Oh, and my left thumb hurts.

Looking at SFIV really gives me high hope for the future of the hardware, by the way. It looks absolutely marvellous for something that was probably thrown together in a couple of months.

 

[Arwin]

Just went to the mediamarkt to check both this and the iPad 2 out. I overheard a salesman that the launch was huge with 130 people showing up at opening for 65 iPad 2s. Almost no interest in the 3DS as far as I could tell - it was definitely not sold out by a mile. I could check it out, see a running demo for pilotwings. The 3D effect worked perfectly and I could see it with no real issues from about 15cm from the screen until about 50cm. Side to side there were several sweetspots with double images appearing when moving between them. No-one was even remotely interested - I saw noone as much as glance at it and even when I pointed out to them that the thing had 3D some half-hearted attempts followed but either no-one could see it or no-one cared. I'm sure it will do well eventually, but right now, over here I'm not expecting much from it.

For me personally, I thought the 3D effect was excellent, but the level of the graphics is something I cannot personally live with, neither in 2D nor in 3D. The contrast with the fantastic iPad 2 screen couldn't be bigger, both literally and figuratively, and my interest in the 3DS went from high (I'm a big fan of 3D displays) to almost none. I thought the introduction of the dualscreen with stylus/touch was a much bigger deal back in the day. I agree with many that I do not see this competing much with the iPod Touch, and Nintendo faces an uphill battle. They will have to pull it through on the strength of their software. I'm sure they're capable of doing just that, but it won't be easy.

 

[JohnH]

Wonder how you get multiple view points with a single parallax barrier, I thought you needed to some kind of lenticular based overlay across the screen to create multiple viewing angles in a passive system...

John.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

For me personally, I thought the 3D effect was excellent, but the level of the graphics is something I cannot personally live with, neither in 2D nor in 3D.The contrast with the fantastic iPad 2 screen couldn't be bigger, both literally and figuratively, and my interest in the 3DS went from high (I'm a big fan of 3D displays) to almost none. I thought the introduction of the dualscreen with stylus/touch was a much bigger deal back in the day. I agree with many that I do not see this competing much with the iPod Touch, and Nintendo faces an uphill battle. They will have to pull it through on the strength of their software. I'm sure they're capable of doing just that, but it won't be easy.

My thoughts exactly. And competition is not just iPod Touch, but every mid-to-high range smartphone being sold 2011 onwards.

Looking at Kotaku's list of "do's and dont's", all the games look really dated (Asphalt 3D looks so bad I actually think it's a cockblocker for the whole gaming system).

I also thought the NGP wouldn't stand a chance without 3D, but things are starting to look differently.

Nintendo might actually have to pay the price for underspeccing their console too much, this time.
Maybe it'll be time to bring Gameboy back as a competitor to NGP, later in 2012-2013?

Q1 2010 would be the a much better launch date for releasing this console, before people had seen UE3 games running on handhelds. And Steam for handhelds might be bringing the Source engine to OpenGL ES 2.0 platforms too (since the whole engine has been ported to OpenGL 3 anyways, due to Mac compatibility).


The Wii is also starting to hit rock-bottom in hardware/software sales, and there's still no factual news of its replacement.

 

[eastmen]

Just went to the mediamarkt to check both this and the iPad 2 out. I overheard a salesman that the launch was huge with 130 people showing up at opening for 65 iPad 2s. Almost no interest in the 3DS as far as I could tell - it was definitely not sold out by a mile. I could check it out, see a running demo for pilotwings. The 3D effect worked perfectly and I could see it with no real issues from about 15cm from the screen until about 50cm. Side to side there were several sweetspots with double images appearing when moving between them. No-one was even remotely interested - I saw noone as much as glance at it and even when I pointed out to them that the thing had 3D some half-hearted attempts followed but either no-one could see it or no-one cared. I'm sure it will do well eventually, but right now, over here I'm not expecting much from it.

For me personally, I thought the 3D effect was excellent, but the level of the graphics is something I cannot personally live with, neither in 2D nor in 3D. The contrast with the fantastic iPad 2 screen couldn't be bigger, both literally and figuratively, and my interest in the 3DS went from high (I'm a big fan of 3D displays) to almost none. I thought the introduction of the dualscreen with stylus/touch was a much bigger deal back in the day. I agree with many that I do not see this competing much with the iPod Touch, and Nintendo faces an uphill battle. They will have to pull it through on the strength of their software. I'm sure they're capable of doing just that, but it won't be easy.

Well considering that nintendo actually has compelling software while apple doesn't it hsouldn't be a problem.

We are talking about decades worth of quality hand held gaming through built in nintendo ds bc and gb /gbc and possibly gba and other portable system virtual stores.

Some of the ipod touch's software is fun for the short term but there is nothing that compares to nintendo's tripple a titles.

 

[Thowllly]

Wonder how you get multiple view points with a single parallax barrier, I thought you needed to some kind of lenticular based overlay across the screen to create multiple viewing angles in a passive system...

John.

A single parallax barrier is enough for multiple viewpoints, when you shift your position from the middle, the barrier blocks the columns one pixel off from what it should block, so you get inverted depth, but shift some more and it will be two pixels off and your eyes see the correct images again.

My gf went to buy a 3ds for me, but they were actually all sold out. Later she got a call from the store, someone hadn't picked up their preordered 3ds, so we went and bought it. 500usd for one 3ds plus 3 games plus a carrying case (thats including 25% sales tax, so 400usd without tax), probably would have had to order online to get it much cheaper here in norway. Not impressed by the selection of games. The unit itself is very nice. The 3d effect is very nice, makes the gfx look much better, but also makes it much harder to watch somebody else play. The position of the dpad is not optimal, but apart from that I think the controls are good so far.

 

[Entropy]

Some of the ipod touch's software is fun for the short term but there is nothing that compares to nintendo's tripple a titles.

While I doubt that these statements will ever die, I don't think a lot of people would agree anymore.
iOS games are already great, and will only improve from here as the installed base of devices grows along with their capabilities, not only in terms of graphics and other low level hardware, but also support in the form of secondary devices (accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS, cameras, multitouch recognition, AR features) and third party toolsets and middleware. Large budget games are by definition large projects - they need to see a reasonable chance of good profitability before they are even initiated, and they take time to finish. Three years ago, noone would have made that investment in an iOS game. Today, the landscape has changed, and rest assured you'll see the result of that as the larger players launch efforts to cash in on the popularity of the platform, if that is the kind of product you like.

But even now, does Nintendo offer anything like Ascendancy (Masters of Orion-type space strategy), GalaxyOnFire 2 (Space exploration, mining, fighting, trading RPG a la X-series), Carcassone (strategy), et cetera?
Does Nintendo offer a host of delightfully addictive games like Tiny Wings, Angry birds, DungeonRaid, Doodle Jump, Plants vs. Zombies et cetera (Yes they do!) at $0.99? (No they don't!)

And in my book most significantly, do they offer a host of low budget but wonderfully creative games that is a wellspring of gaming ideas that every other platform will leech from the next decade? In the thousands?

Nintendo has their established franchises, physical controls, 3D - I doubt they will die overnight or even at all. But the reason won't be the weakness of the iOS platform and offerings, but rather how compelling and unique they can make their own. It wasn't by accident that Iwata a year ago identified Apple as their greatest competitive challenge. Consumers go where the entertainment value is, low budget developers go where they can get published and distributed, and big budget developers go where the money is. Nintendo knew their business well enough to see the writing on the wall.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Well considering that nintendo actually has compelling software while apple doesn't it hsouldn't be a problem.

We are talking about decades worth of quality hand held gaming through built in nintendo ds bc and gb /gbc and possibly gba and other portable system virtual stores.

Older and more experienced companies have fallen before at their own game versus new contestants. And we don't even have to observe other markets, just look at Playstation 1 vs. Nintendo + Sega back in the nineties.


The "it's nintendo with their decades of experience in games" argument is just as valid now as it was when the N64 came out.
Big companies make mistakes. As well organized as they may be and as many geniuses they may have, they're still being run by flawed humans.
Let's not forget that.




Now... Nintendo made a huge $hitload of money with the Wii and the DS. What are they doing with that money?
It doesn't seem like the 3DS had a very expensive R&D, since it hardly has any state-of-the-art hardware in it (sharp has been making those screens for 2 years, PICA200 dates from 2006 and ARM11 is now almost 10 years old).


So what are they spending their R&D money in?

 

[Entropy]

So what are they spending their R&D money in?

Well, the forum enthusiast guess would obviously be "an uber-Wii"!
And I'm sure they have invested quite a bit into where to go with the Wii, but a company like Nintendo that tries to come up with new stuff as well as more of the same have probably invested a lot of money into researching ideas that got shot down. "D" can be difficult and expensive, but is relatively predictable in ROI vs. "R", where you can spend a lot of time and money to investigate dead ends. How many people researched how many ideas for how long and to what depth before rejection?

There are a lot of costs involved in producing a new platform that somehow never get added to the BOM that analysts provide.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

How many people researched how many ideas for how long and to what depth before rejection?

Dude, don't even remind me of that. As a researcher myself, I share that pain

The "caos" factor in any research project is so decisive it's scary.

So either the uber-Wii is a decently specced follow-up or not, it's up to "caos", as far as we know..

 

[wco81]

Any problems with headaches or other symptoms from looking at the screen too long?

 

[Sigfried1977]

I didn't encounter any such issues thus far, but then I also don't have any problems with shutter glasses tech, so I'm probably not the best person to answer the question.

 

[Mize]

Checked out a 3DS today (local Gamestop had plenty) and the screen is surprisingly good IMHO. Maybe my eyes/brain are just suited to it. My son was going to buy one but instead decided to wait till there are some more compelling titles (for his taste) in 3D.

 

[Teasy]

Ok, can we please not turn this thread into another I-thing vs gaming handheld thread?, its becoming a recurring theme for some of you. This is a thread for 3DS impressions.

 

[Teasy]

Any problems with headaches or other symptoms from looking at the screen too long?

Not so far, but 3D seems to be different for everyone. For instance I've heard of people having problems looking from the 2D screen to the 3D one because they need to re-focus their eyes each time. For me its not something I need to try to see/re-focus for, its instant.