Tendo City

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/19/3ds-fe...iend-code/

So it seems the 3DS will have ONE friend code across all games. About time! It's a solid step and a good foundation to build on for catching up to XBox Live, but there's still a long way to go.

Also, some sort of auto discovery is in there. That's nice.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/19/ninten...ease-date/

Wow... Wow.... That's... expensive. Really, $250? That's most certainly the most expensive system Nintendo's ever sold, and it's a portable. Granted, it appears this is a very powerful system, but it's in the range of the Wii, not the 360, so it's a little shocking. The 3D screen could also play a part there, as would miniaturization, but still, that's a lot. Considering the battery power is the lowest of any of Nintendo's portables (about 2-5 hours), what I'm getting from this is a total reversal of Nintendo's own long-standing policies for portable systems (that is, they should be cheap, and energy efficient). It's coming out in a few months anyway. They've already "run through" the current production of DS-i systems, and don't intend to make any more (that thing really did just end up being a stop-gap system).

I can only understand this as a result of Nintendo further copying Apple's strategy, that is the part I hoped they wouldn't notice, that Apple can "get away" with charging insane amounts for it's own portable devices and people fork it over by the handful. They also copied the "simple and intuitive" interface, but unfortunately fail at function people expect from modern systems.

I'm wondering if I shouldn't hold off here until they either lower the price or release the "new and improved" version with far superior battery life, but missing something else like the power switch or something (it's a Nintendo product, they always must taketh away something whenever they upgrade a product). Really though, the only other portables I can think of that got away with a price this high... all failed. I mean, this one WON'T because it's Nintendo's, but still... Let's see... Sega Nomad... That 32 bit Lynx thing... PSPGo (:D, seriously, Sony were morons thinking a stripped down PSP could sell for more than a proper one).

It's the same price as the Wii at launch.

Great Rumbler Wrote:It's the same price as the Wii at launch.

And the PSP.

Quote:Wow... Wow.... That's... expensive. Really, $250? That's most certainly the most expensive system Nintendo's ever sold, and it's a portable. Granted, it appears this is a very powerful system, but it's in the range of the Wii, not the 360, so it's a little shocking. The 3D screen could also play a part there, as would miniaturization, but still, that's a lot. Considering the battery power is the lowest of any of Nintendo's portables (about 2-5 hours), what I'm getting from this is a total reversal of Nintendo's own long-standing policies for portable systems (that is, they should be cheap, and energy efficient). It's coming out in a few months anyway. They've already "run through" the current production of DS-i systems, and don't intend to make any more (that thing really did just end up being a stop-gap system).

You're right, in terms of power, battery life, and price, I agree that the 3DS is a reversal of almost all precedent for Nintendo portables. The whole concept from the beginning was cheap, low power, and long battery life, with lots of good games. Now only the last of those is there. Will this be a problem? Well, likely not in the end, but the price will probably slow adaptation, yes, compared to if it was cheaper like previous Nintendo handhelds. On the other hand, rumors had put the price at perhaps as much as $300, so at least it's cheaper than it could have been.

As for the battery life, it's quite unfortunate, but it's probably just a result of the fact that battery technology hasn't nearly kept pace with computer power. Battery technology doesn't have anything like Moore's Law constantly pushing advances forward. Perhaps there'll be some big advance in batteries in the future, but we don't have it now.

On that note, if the PSP 2 is anywhere near as powerful as rumored -- that is, much more powerful than 3DS -- and the current PSP and PSP Go get battery life around what the 3DS will, I have to really wonder how awful that thing's battery life will be...

Oh yeah, and at least these systems have rechargeable batteries. Even the Lynx and Nomad, with their perhaps 2 or 3 hour battery lives on 6 AAs (2-3 or 3-4 or something for Lynx model 1 and 5-6 for model 2, or something like that?), or the Game Gear with 6-7 hours on 6 AAs, wouldn't be nearly as bad if they were rechargeable, with modern rechargeable battery technology. Of course that battery tech was too expensive or didn't exist back then (that at least has improved), but really, the problem with those systems was as much the cost of having to constantly buy batteries as it was the very short battery life.

(The original brick Game Boy, for the record, has the best battery life of any Nintendo handheld at (35-)40 hours on 4 AAs.)

GR, it's no point comparing console and portable prices. We expect that.

As for the PSP, well, it was the PSP. There's a reason it couldn't keep up with the DS. I waited until a price drop, which came pretty fast. Now the thing's a much more affordable $150, except for the PSPGo.

As for the PSP2, those rumors are coming from developers who Sony directly told would have a system as powerful as the PS3. Sony often blusters about that sort of thing, but still, it could be a big deal.

ABF, as for power concerns, yes, battery tech just hasn't kept up. Physics is standing in the way. There's a bare minimum power you can "store" without it being dangerous. Even Moore's Law is nearing it's end, as we bump into smaller scales where physics prevents it from shrinking further. Right now, portable devices depend not on improving battery power but on improving power efficiency in things like the incredibly popular (in portables) ARM processor, chosen above all else for it's low power demands. I'm sure that the second model will be far more efficient thanks to better and more consolidated designs.

Trust this, just about every company that bothers with power supplies at all are R&Ding up some sort of amazing new battery tech. There's a race, especially with modern devices being as power hungry as they are, to come up with SOMETHING because whoever does it first will be raking in billions. However, physics ya know? How does it work?

Quote:As for the PSP, well, it was the PSP. There's a reason it couldn't keep up with the DS. I waited until a price drop, which came pretty fast. Now the thing's a much more affordable $150, except for the PSPGo.

$150 for a six year old handheld system which hasn't had a pricedrop in years is affordable, now? I don't think so. Sony has obviously decided to just leave it at its current price even though it's completely fallen apart outside of Japan, but that doesn't meant that the current price makes sense, it doesn't.

Quote:As for the PSP2, those rumors are coming from developers who Sony directly told would have a system as powerful as the PS3. Sony often blusters about that sort of thing, but still, it could be a big deal.

True, you're right that Sony always over-states system power. Still, it'll surely be very powerful, and that means likely a short battery life.

With the 3DS for instance even though "3-5 hours" is the battery life estimate, evidently turning off the 3D and wi-fi (with the slider and switch on the case) will have a significant impact on battery life, it's much better with them off. With the PSP2... yeah we'll see.

Quote:Trust this, just about every company that bothers with power supplies at all are R&Ding up some sort of amazing new battery tech. There's a race, especially with modern devices being as power hungry as they are, to come up with SOMETHING because whoever does it first will be raking in billions. However, physics ya know? How does it work?

True, but there hasn't been much success yet...

My point was that while we don't have any huge breakthroughs in battery tech, it isn't for lack of trying. And, there have been numerous SMALL breakthroughs. Over time, those add up.

It's similar to how people whine about scientists not finding "the cure for cancer", as though it's just some single cure waiting to be put into a pill, even though over the decades countless small advances in treating it have been successfully developed, to the point where today's cancer treatment is massively better than it was 50 years ago. Computer advancement is incredible, but I think it spoils us to the speed every other field advances at to the point people don't recognize that they ARE still advancing.

Good news everyone!

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/...nsfers.ars

...Nintendo really needs to get on the ball fixing this nonsense. Both Sony and MS allow content to be transfered to new systems, even if their methods are a little convoluted. It's a problem with their Wii, in the case that anyone ever decides to buy a new one rather than ship their old Wii in for repair. Nintendo currently has NO methods in place to handle transferring content between systems, and that's a failure on their part. This is especially true considering the almost inevitable release of an improved version of the 3DS down the road All things considering, it's a really good thing I never got a DSi and bought content for that. I'd be unable to sell it without losing downloaded games forever.

I have to ask. What is the point of linking your system ID to your Nintendo Fun Club ID if it won't actually help you with this sort of thing? It's one thing to have lackluster online support, that's just a failure to catch up to the others. This goes beyond that to a failure to actually serve your customers.

http://www.nintendo.com/3ds/built-in-software

So as it turns out, on their main web page Nintendo DOES have a system in place after all. This is good to know. It'll have limitations, but I'm okay with that. During the lifetime of the system I'll likely only have one big upgrade that'll require me to move things, and AFTER the lifetime of the system, I'll just hack the thing (hacking is inevitable, and Nintendo's security is notoriously weak). Now then, if only they could work that into the Wii. I'm still baffled that certain save files (as determined by the developer of the game in question) are locked and can't be moved. Why would you be worried about someone copying SAVE FILES of all things? It was a dumb decision on the Gamecube, and it's a dumb decision on the Wii.

In other news, how hilarious is it that Nintendo's strict refusal to use anything but cartridges for their portables has paid off so well in the long run, now that their 3DS cards have storage in the same range as DVDs? Mind you, the PSP2 will probably use mini-bluray, but it's still pretty impressive.

Hmm... the PSP2... Will it even have a disk slot? Will they ditch UMD support on that system, and will it even be able to play PSP1 games? Lots of questions there...

PSP2.. current rumors say "really powerful", 3G support (but not for phonecalls, just for gaming and downloads and stuff), OLED touchscreen on the front, touch panel on the back, and an unknown but probably quite high price. We'll see which of them are true.

Also, yeah, the 3DS will probably have some way of copying stuff over from a DSi, supposedly. That's good, that is something Nintendo hasn't supported before as you say. We'll see though, could go either way evidently as that article you linked says...

Quote:Umezu: What eats more electricity than anything in a handheld gaming device is the LCD backlight.

Iwata: Nintendo 3DS has two of those—and the upper one is for 3D.

Umezu: Right. And the 3D one has to delivery separate images to the left and right eyes. Which means that in 3D the amount of light delivered to each eye is halved. In order to make it look just as bright as usual, you have to increase the brightness of the backlight, which increases the power used by even more.

Iwata: Choosing 3D led to the need to double the graphics and increase the brightness of the backlight, so there must have been a lot of challenges with regard to power.

Umezu: I knew from the very start that the LCDs would require lots of power, so I thought we couldn't use that much for graphics. I spent quite a lot of time looking into programmable shading, but when you use that method for a handheld game system, you also have software processing in the SoC, and a number of steps become necessary for calculating the shading to render one point on the screen, so it can't keep up if the operating frequency21 isn't fast enough.

Iwata: In other words, that method eats up too much power.

Umezu: Yes. We knew that DMP's technology had the merit of calculating with the hardware, so we could cut down on the power used. 21. Operating frequency: Also known as clock rate. It signifies the rate for synchronizing the parts of a circuit.
Iwata:

DMP's technology achieves with the hardware most of the shadow calculation usually done by a programmable shader, so even a slower operating frequency can achieve the same results. With today's semiconductor technology, the frequency has a direct influence on power use, so it's very beneficial in that regard.
Umezu:

Yes. I thought DMP's technology was best for saving power, given the limits of a handheld gaming system. What's more, to save power just a little more, we prepared a power save mode for the backlight.

Umezu: As mentioned earlier, what uses the most power in a handheld gaming device is the LCD backlight, and making one screen 3D presented the problem of even more power used by the backlight. The power save mode uses a technology called active backlight. It precisely controls the brightness of the backlight according to the brightness of the screen being displayed. When the screen as a whole is dark, the backlight itself gets darker, which saves power.

Iwata: In principle, it may not be much use in a game with lots of bright screens, but if you set the backlight to bright, the more darker screens there are in a game, the greater the effect of the power save mode.

Umezu: Right. But you can't say exactly how much of an effect the power save mode is having on game processing because of the various factors that influence power use, such as how constantly the SoC is running, whether you're using the camera or wireless, and how loud the volume is set.

Iwata: Maybe you can't be exact, but how about an approximation?

Umezu: We announced the other day that the battery duration for playing Nintendo 3DS games on it is about three to five hours. When I measured it by playing several Nintendo games, with the backlight set to the brightest level and the power save mode turned off, battery duration was about three hours. But if you use the power save mode under the same conditions, it gets about 10-20% longer. And if you set the backlight to the darkest setting, the battery lasts five hours, but the power save mode makes less of a difference then.

Iwata: In other words, the brightness of the backlight has the greatest effect on battery duration.

Umezu: Right. What's more, with the backlight set as high as it will go, battery life changes about 25% according to whether you're playing in 2D or 3D.

Iwata: Yes, 3D is a battle against power use. How about wireless use? Some players may be worried about that.

Umezu: In StreetPass mode, the system isn't always communicating, so there isn't much of a drain on the battery, but games that communicate a lot through local play and online play—with the backlight set to high—have an over 10% effect on the battery.

Iwata: So it will be necessary for this system to be charged more often than for the previous systems. For that reason, we include a special charging cradle. We recommend that when players get home, they put their system there.

From http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interview....s-made/1/0

Estimate from GAF, using those percentages:

Quote:Reposted from the Iwata Asks thread:

So, we know how power save works now (it's basically the same as dynamic contrast on LCD TVs) and Streetpass isn't constantly communicating. We can roughly guess the battery life.

3D: 3-5 hours (4.2 hours with WiFi on constantly) (Highest Brightness is 4 hours with power save on)

2D: 8 hours (6.5 hours with WiFi on constantly)

Not as good as I was hoping for to be honest. I weep for the PSP 2!

Also:

Quote:Iwata: The first thing (Nobuo) Nagai-san10, who's in charge at the Uji plant, said to me when he looked over the designs for Nintendo 3DS before mass production began was "This time it's fully packed right from the start."

Sugino: Oh, really? (laughs) But he was right. That's why we don't have any short-term plans for creating a more compact version of Nintendo 3DS like we did with Nintendo DS Lite. (laughs)

Iwata: Yeah. (laughs) When making Nintendo 3DS, we used all our tricks for Nintendo DS Lite—and more—for cutting down on size right from the start.