Nintendo 3DS hardware thread

It's all a little finicky though. If we're assuming the device isn't being sold at a loss per-unit - and frankly I don't see how it could be - then there's no question of whether it's "profitable" or "not profitable", but instead a question of how many units it has to sell to become profitable. Maybe "losing money" is in fiscal quarter granularity, meaning that Nintendo's 3DS hardware division will post a loss for at least one quarter. But that then begs the question of exactly where the fixed cost overhead is allocated, time-wise.

 

At least we can be sure that the motivation to do so is that they are worried their own upcoming titles won't have enough of a platform to sell to (though that's a bit of a catch-22) and that 3rd party publishers won't bother releasing titles for their platform. They've basically said so themselves.

 

I found the quote here:

http://www.bloomberg.co.jp/apps/news?pid=90920000&sid=aiRPDx3CQhjw

But it looks like sort of a paraphrase of what Mr. Iwata said.

 

Exactly what I suspected. And unfortunately the misleading Andriansang headline is now being traded online as established fact.

 

Yeah, journo's do that. We'd need a complete quote. Still, if we make enough noise, Nintendo will probably make an official statement to clarify.

OMG! Nintendo 3DS sold at a loss! Nintendo's profits are going to plummet! The company's doomed!

 

july 29th.

Shares in Nintendo have tumbled on the Tokyo stock exchange a day after the company announced a loss in the first quarter.

On Thursday, Nintendo reported a net loss of 25.5bn yen ($324m, £201m) for the April-to-June quarter, its first-ever quarterly loss.

In an attempt to boost sales the company has announced huge price cuts.

The price in Japan will be about 40% less - retailing at 15,000 yen. In the US, the price will drop next month to $169.99 from $249.99.

However, analysts said the price cut may hurt the company's earnings even further.

"The timing of the 3DS hardware price cut is surprising, given the major in-house software releases," said Hiroshi Kamide of JP Morgan."We believe the 3DS will be a heavy weight on earnings over the medium term," he added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14337301

 

And .... we Europeans will still pay outrageous high price of €250 for 3DS?



As of current (4.8.2011) €1 ~ $1.41

So in that terms in EU 3DS equivalent price in US dollars is around 352!

 

No, the price drop is world wide obviously. The European price will drop to 169.99 Euro's including tax. That's $200 excluding tax compared to the new US price of $169.99 excluding tax.

What do you mean barely a year beyond PSP?

IMO you seriously underestimate the hardware if you think being twice as powerful at $150 would have been at all reasonable (twice as powerful at $250 maybe). I mean considering Nintendo aren't into losing loads of cash on hardware.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-09-cod-modern-warfare-3-ds-announced

I wonder what it says about the 3DS when developers decide to put something as popular as Modern Warfare 3 on the DS but not the 3DS? It's no doubt a chicken and the egg problem with user base. You'd think a big third party title like Modern Warfare 3 with 3D in the palm of your hands would be just the thing to push 3DS sales. I guess there's always the chance Activision wants to due the 3DS title internally if the hardware is capable enough of reusing assets from the console versions.

 

Stuff like this happens with any new console. I wouldn't be surprised if the devs kits weren't even in hand by the time MW3 got started.

 

Are we any closer to finding out just how powerful this hardware is? Supposedly there was just an update that unlocked a 2nd CPU to use. And a PICA 200 update called Maestro 2.0 that allows for more features?

 

No idea where any of the information comes from but maybe stuff that ends up on this wiki might be useful:

http://3dbrew.org/wiki/Hardware

 

Well the wiki page Exophase posted has been updated with a lot of info now:

SoC - Nintendo 1048 0H (Custom): CPU, GPU, VRAM & DSP all on one chip.
CPU - ARM11 MPCore 2x 268MHz & 2x VFP Co-Processor
GPU - DMP PICA 268MHz (1.1Gpixel/s)
DSP - 134Mhz. 24ch 32728Hz sampling rates
VRAM - 6 MB within SoC. Independent of system memory (FCRAM).
Main Memory - 2x64MB Fujitsu MB82M8080-07L FCRAM
Storage - Toshiba THGBM2G3P1FBAI8 1GB NAND Flash
Power Management - Texas Instruments PAIC3010B 0AA37DW
Gyroscope - Invensense ITG-3270 MEMS Gyroscope
Accelerometer - ST Micro 2048 33DH X1MAQ Accelerometer Model LIS331DH
Wifi - 802.11b/g Atheros AR6014
Infrared IC - NXP infrared IC, "S750 0803 TSD031C"
Auxiliary Microcontroller - UC CTR, custom Nintendo microcontroller

EDIT: I added a polygon number originally but there seems to be too much conflicting info on what PICA200 can do geometry wise so I've removed it..

 

Would a Wireless N IC be that much more expensive?


BTW, who and what is using that infrared?
No WiFi-N (so our home networks will have to downgrade to G everytime we connect this), no Bluetooth (can't be used as a controller without spending lots of power).. and an infrared port..
Lots of brainfarts happened at Nintendo during the development cycle of this console.

 

It is curious. Maybe it was going to add more cost than they thought worthwhile. They were already splurging on other aspects of the hardware.

On a related note, until I looked it up just now I thought Wii was 802.11b. I always had to set my G router to mixed mode to get it to connect.

 

A 2011 handheld using a pair of 268MHz ARM11s (and only initially giving you access to one!) while still managing to have poor battery life.. all those things you mentioned seem to pale in comparison to this ;p

 

I'm guessing dual screens with one being 3D and selectable 3D at that is the primary reason for the poor battery life...

 

The 3D won't be any more power draw than just a screen. It's a passive parallax barrier - doesn't even need more brightness to composate for dimming like glasses-based 3D displays.

 

Well, regardless of what the culprit is a much better CPU would probably still take only a pretty small fraction of the power draw. Although I have a feeling that Nintendo opted for a pretty dated process node, maybe to make some partner happy.

 

The 3DS is just an underwhelming design altogether. At least they dropped the price point on the damn thing.

250$ was far too step an asking price.. Not even mentioning the lack of any great software at launch or even awhile post.