Nintendo 3DS business future *spawn

[tongue_of_colicab]

iphones and androids starting at free ranging to 200 depending on how much build in memory you want. The reality is that cost wise, smart phones are as cheap if not cheaper than gaming handhelds in many markets.

No they are not. Just because you pay for it over 24 months doesn't make it cheaper than spending 250 euro's one time. If I take a 300k loan on a Ferrari and do a 10k downpayment does that suddenly make my Ferrari a super cheap car? No ofcourse not! because I'll be paying 15k a month for the thing.

Talk all you want but you can't make those monthly expenses go away and a lot of people take them into consideration when they buy a phone (atleast I know I did) because a 200 euro high end phone seems nice but if you can afford the 40 euro 24month contract you have a problem.

 

[aaronspink]

No they are not. Just because you pay for it over 24 months doesn't make it cheaper than spending 250 euro's one time. If I take a 300k loan on a Ferrari and do a 10k downpayment does that suddenly make my Ferrari a super cheap car? No ofcourse not! because I'll be paying 15k a month for the thing.

Lets put it this way, you are going to be paying X per month. You can spend an extra $100-200 upfront and get a ferrari or you can spend nothing and get a pinto. What are you going to do?

Talk all you want but you can't make those monthly expenses go away and a lot of people take them into consideration when they buy a phone (atleast I know I did) because a 200 euro high end phone seems nice but if you can afford the 40 euro 24month contract you have a problem.

You simply do not understand a large part of the market. The pricing in many markets is such that you can either pay X per month and get no phone, or pay x per month and they'll subsidize a large portion of a high end phone. If I'm on any of the US carriers for instance, they don't have separate pricing for phone not under contract and phones under contract. Since the pricing is the same, it only makes sense to have them pay the vast majority for a new hot phone.

 

[Arun]

You simply do not understand a large part of the market. The pricing in many markets is such that you can either pay X per month and get no phone, or pay x per month and they'll subsidize a large portion of a high end phone. If I'm on any of the US carriers for instance, they don't have separate pricing for phone not under contract and phones under contract. Since the pricing is the same, it only makes sense to have them pay the vast majority for a new hot phone.

Correct - but to be fair, operator subsidies are handled a lot more logically by some operators in some countries.

EDIT: tongue_of_colicab: Maybe I understood aaronspink wrong, but it seems to me that his point is a lot more similar to silent_guy's than you give him credit for. The point isn't that that the phone is free; the point is that if you're going to pay $800 in monthly bills over two years anyway, you might as well pay an extra $100 to $200 upfront so that you actually have a better device - one that, coincidentally, will also have much better gaming performance.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

No you don't understand. In Holland you get every phone for free on a 2 year contract but that doesn't mean everybody runs out buying these phones because they are ''free''. Anybody with half a brain understand they will be paying atleast 30 euro's a month for 2 years so people work out for themselves if that works for them or not. Nobody considers the phone to be free, only that you can pay for it on a monthly basis.

I seriously can't get my mind around how I should see a phone to be free while I'm paying monthly charges for it.

The fact of the matter is that spin it anyway you like a 3ds will cost you 250 euro's or so for 6 years and a smartphone will costs you a lot more even over just 2 years. The only difference is the upfront costs might be lower but really that is no argument.

 

[eastmen]

And the next gen handhelds will have trouble getting the same battery life as a smartphone. You are ignoring the fact that a DS is pretty archaic hardware. The 3DS is listed at LESS battery life than my current phone which I can play hours of demanding games on.

Your wrong though aaron . Look at it this way , if the 3ds is 3 hours of gaming and my andriod phone also gets 3 hours of gaming. I can still play 3 hours on my 3ds and then not have to charge my phone all day vs 3 hours of gaming and then having to find a wall to recharge at and missing important calls , emails and text messages.

That is the reason why cell phone gaming as more than a diversion when i'm really bored and waiting on something isn't going to take off . It destroys the devices primary use.

I'm not sure what games your playing on your phone. But for Tron i sat in line with my friends and we have a slew of diffrent devices no ones phone lasted the whole time on line which was a little more than 3 hours. I stoped gaming after an hour on my phone and took out my zune hd and played on that. My buddy on his droid incredible mabye it less than 2 hours and his phone was fully dead and wouldn't turn on. The iphone 4g last just a little longer than that

I don't know about you but thats not acceptable to me. I need my phone for many reasons.

Its the same reason i have a dedicated gps .

I was playing angry birds for hours last week at one point, sucked down ~20% of the battery to play for 3 hours.

thats great for you , angry birds is on par with a ds game graphicly. I can play a game on that level for 10 hours on my dsi and then still have a full charge on my phone.

Amazing i'd say. The 3ds is quoted at 3hrs but i'm sure like all the systems you will get more than 3 hrs of game time and someone will come out with extended batterys .

Thats another great thing about the dsi .

http://www.xtreamgadgets.com/product.php?productid=9453841

$10 bucks to double the life

the iphone doesn't have that option

 

[eastmen]

No you don't understand. In Holland you get every phone for free on a 2 year contract but that doesn't mean everybody runs out buying these phones because they are ''free''. Anybody with half a brain understand they will be paying atleast 30 euro's a month for 2 years so people work out for themselves if that works for them or not. Nobody considers the phone to be free, only that you can pay for it on a monthly basis.

I seriously can't get my mind around how I should see a phone to be free while I'm paying monthly charges for it.

The fact of the matter is that spin it anyway you like a 3ds will cost you 250 euro's or so for 6 years and a smartphone will costs you a lot more even over just 2 years. The only difference is the upfront costs might be lower but really that is no argument.

People in the states justify it as the phone being free or reduced cost and then you pay monthly for continued service.

Either way its the same thing , without the service your phone is worthless as a game machine. How do you download new games to an andriod phone or an iphone ? Put it in wifi mode ? Can you get to the market place that way ?

 

[Teasy]

What you're missing is that, up to ~$200, a lot of people don't really care about the difference between free and $200.

Well that means 3DS is basically free for them, so great they can all get one without even thinking

The monthly plan is relatively expensive, but I want it anyway. There's no point in paying for such plan but using a crap $0 phone with the bad experience of, e.g., the stuttered scrolling of Android. (Yes, all of them. My hands on with the first iteration Playbook showed that even RIM is able to do this better than Google.)

What stuttering are you referring too? I have a £99 Android Phone with Android 2.2 and there's no stuttering what so ever, was slightly slower with 2.1 but I wouldn't really have called that stuttering either.

Yeah, the iPhone still beats Android massively in that area. There are two issues here: first the way you handle I/O so it doesn't stall (this is a gradual process and is presumably improving with every new Android version) and more importantly Android's 2D library (Skia) does not yet have a sufficiently mature OpenGL ES path, so it's basically 100% done on the CPU. I expect there to be at least some amount of GPU acceleration (enough to make the issue completely gone on anything with a Cortex-A8 processor or better) within one year or less, but we'll see.

I've used both my friends Iphones and there's no difference between 2D speed on their Iphone 3GS/Iphone 4 and my cheap Android phone. Fair enough I'm using a custom ROM with hardware acceleration enabled, with the original Orange Android 2.1 ROM there was maybe some slight stuttering.

 

[Teasy]

aaronspink, seriously, what phone do you have?, its always interesting for me to know what phones have that kind of battery life.

 

[Arun]

I've used both my friends Iphones and there's no difference between 2D speed on their Iphone 3GS/Iphone 4 and my cheap Android phone. Fair enough I'm using a custom ROM with hardware acceleration enabled, but my original Orange 2.1 ROM wasn't much slower.

Browser scrolling for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLLi5ccES4o (see 6:25) - but as you point out smoothness in general has improved a lot over time. I must admit I'm still not sure what exactly those "hardware accelerated ROMs" are - I know some custom ROMs just didn't expose the GPU at all, but that wouldn't explain why it's faster than the stock ROM so I'm at a loss here... Surely they didn't hack in OpenGL ES support for Skia?

 

[eastmen]

i have to say i'm more concerned about the recharge time for the 3ds than the battery life. 3hrs to recharge a battery life of 3hr 30 minutes ? THats a bit crazy

DSi numbers.
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/series/dsi/spec/index.html

Lowest brightness: 9 - 14 hours
It is low brightness: 8 - 12 hours
Medium brightness: 6 - 9 hours
High brightness : 4 - 6 hours
The highest brightness Approximately: 3 - 4 hours

Hopefully its the same thing and each brightness setting picks you up 1-2 hrs. I normaly play on medium with my dsi and get about 10hrs of game play. If its the same on the the 3ds then highest is 3hrs High would be 4-5 , medium would be 5-7 . That would be ideal for me.

Still the charging time is a bit nuts.

 

[Teasy]

i have to say i'm more concerned about the recharge time for the 3ds than the battery life. 3hrs to recharge a battery life of 3hr 30 minutes ? THats a bit crazy




Hopefully its the same thing and each brightness setting picks you up 1-2 hrs. I normaly play on medium with my dsi and get about 10hrs of game play. If its the same on the the 3ds then highest is 3hrs High would be 4-5 , medium would be 5-7 . That would be ideal for me.

Still the charging time is a bit nuts.

Its a 1300mAh battery. Also 3 hours 30 minutes isn't mentioned anywhere, its 3 to 5 hours.

 

[Teasy]

Browser scrolling for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLLi5ccES4o (see 6:25) - but as you point out smoothness in general has improved a lot over time. I must admit I'm still not sure what exactly those "hardware accelerated ROMs" are - I know some custom ROMs just didn't expose the GPU at all, but that wouldn't explain why it's faster than the stock ROM so I'm at a loss here... Surely they didn't hack in OpenGL ES support for Skia?

Ah right, I suppose there is still some slight stuttering on my phone while browsing the more complex websites. Not sure exactly what HW acceleration does on these phones, but it seems to smooth things out a bit.

 

[Xmas]

I think everyone will agree that the market for dedicated gaming handhelds isn't just going away overnight. The question is, will it shrink or will it grow?

No doubt the number of people who could afford a gaming handheld is growing (emerging markets), as is the number of people who'd consider playing video games (generational shift). On the other hand, smart phones and tablets are becoming wildly popular. Those who have such devices and are more interested in "casual" gaming (which doesn't really have to be casual at all) will find it harder to justify buying and carrying another device, while they had little choice but get a DS before. It also remains to be seen to what degree 3D as the main feature will convince existing DS users to upgrade.

Its the same reason i have a dedicated gps .

Do you use it for hiking or other outdoor activities? Most people use a GPS in their car, hooked up to a car charger.

$10 bucks to double the life

the iphone doesn't have that option

An iPhone case with battery costs more than $10, but the option is there.

 

[eastmen]

Do you use it for hiking or other outdoor activities? Most people use a GPS in their car, hooked up to a car charger.

I use it for both. In my car I have this http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Magellan+-+RoadMate+1700+GPS/9464153.p?id=1218108989749&skuId=9464153

I'd never replace it with a phone until they get that big and i don't have to worry about batterys.

Remember with a phone if i need to switch over to a primary task like messaging or speaking its going to mess with using a gps. The other problem is also set up. my gp is set up and the wires run to mount on my dash. I'd have to run a wire to keep my phoen charged up there.

An iPhone case with battery costs more than $10, but the option is there.

I dunno how they are now , i remember my friends for is touch being bigger than the phone itself.

 

[Kaotik]

Lets put it this way, you are going to be paying X per month. You can spend an extra $100-200 upfront and get a ferrari or you can spend nothing and get a pinto. What are you going to do?



You simply do not understand a large part of the market. The pricing in many markets is such that you can either pay X per month and get no phone, or pay x per month and they'll subsidize a large portion of a high end phone. If I'm on any of the US carriers for instance, they don't have separate pricing for phone not under contract and phones under contract. Since the pricing is the same, it only makes sense to have them pay the vast majority for a new hot phone.

But US != world, for example here we don't have such deals as you have over there.
We have basicly 2 options - either pay full price for phone straight away, or pay it overtime on top of the normal bill and agree to use the same carrier for next year or two.
Sometimes there's special offers where the contract you do is incredibly cheap considering the features, or the phone is cheaper than normally, but those are rarity.

 

[silent_guy]

No you don't understand. In Holland you get every phone for free on a 2 year contract but that doesn't mean everybody runs out buying these phones because they are ''free''. Anybody with half a brain understand they will be paying atleast 30 euro's a month for 2 years so people work out for themselves if that works for them or not. Nobody considers the phone to be free, only that you can pay for it on a monthly basis.

Hurray, let's spend some more time discussing semantics.

The point of Aaron and me stays the same: in the US, if you want a particular data plan, the difference between no phone/crap phone or an iPhone is $200. You'd be surprised that most of us actually have more than half a brain and, yes, we do realize this iPhone is paid for over time.

But why should we care if this is the only option after all?

So the incremental additional cost for an iPhone is $200. And, given that there are no other possibilities if you need a smart phone, that's the only price that matters. End of story.

The fact of the matter is that spin it anyway you like a 3ds will cost you 250 euro's or so for 6 years and a smartphone will costs you a lot more even over just 2 years. The only difference is the upfront costs might be lower but really that is no argument.

How many people who already have a good smartphone are going to say:"Let's go back to a dumb phone without data plan and buy a 3DS instead?"

The 3DS will be yet another incremental expense, for only 1 function.

 

[silent_guy]

What stuttering are you referring too? I have a £99 Android Phone with Android 2.2 and there's no stuttering what so ever, was slightly slower with 2.1 but I wouldn't really have called that stuttering either.

The stutter/low frame rate that's present in any Android phone I've handled (and there are many), including Nexus One and Nexus S, but that none of the Android users actually notice, so don't worry about it. It's really good for them, but it's annoying as hell if you've enjoyed 3 years of iPhone animation goodness.

See also: The Care and Feeding of the Android GPU.

It's probably one of the main reasons Android 2.3 is still not good enough for a tablet and, hopefully, something Honeycomb will finally fix.

 

[Arun]

.It's probably one of the main reasons Android 2.3 is still not good enough for a tablet and, hopefully, something Honeycomb will finally fix.

2.3 adds a concurrent garbage collector (sub-3ms latency) which is a pretty big deal for smoothness, and it supposedly also handles touch/keyboard events faster. Given that, the situation should be improved on the Nexus S, so I'm a bit surprised you're implying you tried it and felt no improvement. I wouldn't expect web browser scrolling to be any smoother, but I'd at least expect random pauses to be much less frequent - is that not the case?

---

On the topic of the 3DS, maybe we should also consider possible competition from the iPod Touch - I don't think it's as big a factor as smartphones, but at least we don't have to talk about plans and operator lock-in

 

[Teasy]

The stutter/low frame rate that's present in any Android phone I've handled (and there are many), including Nexus One and Nexus S, but that none of the Android users actually notice, so don't worry about it. It's really good for them, but it's annoying as hell if you've enjoyed 3 years of iPhone animation goodness.

See also: The Care and Feeding of the Android GPU.

It's probably one of the main reasons Android 2.3 is still not good enough for a tablet and, hopefully, something Honeycomb will finally fix.

Used the Iphone plenty, seems only Iphone owners notice this amazing smoothness in comparison to other phones Outside of web browsing of course, its definitely faster their. Though I'm not sure how much of that is down to a total lack of flash.

 

[aaronspink]

aaronspink, seriously, what phone do you have?, its always interesting for me to know what phones have that kind of battery life.

iphone 4.