3DS Price slashed

As somebody who has watched PDA-like devices since the beginning I have to say that what we have now for a couple hundred bucks is totally awesome. Handheld devices with cellular, wifi, GPS, camera, accelerometers, compass, touchscreen LCDs with beautiful output, keyboards, dpad for games, 16GB uSD, etc! It's pretty insane.

That's Sony and Nintendo's problem. I don't need Mario 12 or Tekken 10 when I can just get emulators for everything up to PS1 and N64 along with ports and indie stuff on the Android Market. Control scheme could be better but the keyboard+d-pad are good enough for a lot. Hell, I've even had DOS games working in DOSBOX and ScummVM.

And since kids all have their parents conned into paying for these phones, what do they need game devices for anymore?

 

So your going to buy a smartphone so you can play 10 ~ 20 year old games you played 20 times already but now play them with a shitty onscreen buttons? I think that exactly shows why people would buy a dedicated handheld.

 

this is like saying, there's linux. why bother buying or installing windows?, you can game a lot on it, including a few ports, indie games, emulators, dosbox and scummvm, you name it.

you're missing out on every big title though, and even retro-gaming is ill supported. unless it's waracraft III, counterstrike etc. (even emulators just run by double clicking the .exe on windows, but under linux it will not run if it's old and unmaintained)

I advocate using linux, debian stable if your hardware is not too recent and you're fine with oldish software, but the gaming is a pain in the ass.

as for phone keyboards or keypads, do they even support pressing dfferent buttons at the same time, or is it one at once as on a TV remote?

 

Well I'm only missing out on portable console games and I haven't done those since Gameboy anyway. The screens are just too small for me now and I'm not much into the common genres there. The Droid was just a free hand me down and I looked into everything I could do with it. Pretty neat hardware for people who like to mod and try out ports of stuff.

Anyway, we will see if Sony can make their new portable sell. 3DS is a disaster.

No, people who already own a smartphone are going to game on them because they already have them and carry them around all day long. The game options are growing daily on those things and can probably satisfy a lot of people. I imagine people who would never consider a game portable will be playing games on their phones.

 

I wouldn't call it a disaster. More like a major goof up, but it seems they changed course quickly to correct this error. You're making it sound like the 3DS is an utter failure or something.

 

I'd say we don't know yet. If sales don't pick up considerably with the price cut, then ya, its an utter failure.

 

Really, it'll be saved when Pokemon comes out for it.

I can't think of a single non-spinoff pokemon game that hasn't sold millions.

 

The sad thing is their all basically the same recycled thing with a few new pokemon. I'd like to see them actually have to work a little moire on the game to get those kind of sales.