Tendo City

What's the ETA for 3DS? Did it already hit, did anybody nab one?

lazyfatbum Wrote:What's the ETA for 3DS? Did it already hit, did anybody nab one?

To Answer Your Question.. March 27 / no / If yes there some kind of time trailer.

It's out in Japan, but not quite yet in the US... coming very soon. $250 will be the US price, launch titles... um, Super Street Fighter IV is maybe the best one, the only first party ones are Pilotwings Resort, Nintendogs + Cats, and Steel Diver. Pilotwings Resort might be good, not so sure about the other two.

I suppose someone could import it, but unlike previous Nintendo handhelds, this one's apparently got some region locking going on.

(Yes ABF, I know the DSi downloaded software is region locked too. I didn't think it worth mentioning except I know you will.)

Yeah, except this time everything is region locked, original DS games excepted. At least with the DSi there were (and are) almost no DSi-only or DSi-enhanced card games, so it's only the stuff in the shop that was region locked, and I don't think we missed anything of note there (of the few DSiWare games that are of note as far as I know). That, and the system's poor battery life, are the two main downsides. Well, there is a third, higher prices... I mean it's $250, which is a LOT for a handheld, and I think the games are going to be at least $40. Not cheap. Low prices and long battery life were the original Game Boy's two main selling points, along with the great game library... they've abandoned two of those now. I'm going to guess that the 3DS will sell well anyway, but it is too bad that they did that.

On the other hand, it has 3D visuals, which is awesome... I like 3d games, I have and like the Virtual Boy and the Sega Master System 3D Glasses. Glasses free 3d is a pretty great feature.

Yep, just don't move it out of dead center and it's great! You know, don't move the portable, in your hands? I kid, I want to see it in action soon enough when the store demos come along.

The Virtual Boy was interesting... Honestly it's just a fluke that I actually got one back then. I only got 3 games for it: Mario Tennis, Red Alarm, and Wario Land. Of those, Wario Land is certainly the best, and I'd wager the best on the whole system. Hmm, considering the 3DS is... 3D and all, I wonder if they'll be emulating VB games on it? That'd be nice. At least Wario Land VB should get a release. One issue with emulating is that the VB controller had two d-pads on both sides as well as A/B/Start/Select (and two shoulder buttons). Wario Land never used the right d-pad, but other games did for things like controlling aim and movement (just like duel analog sticks do today). Red Alarm would be trouble. I'm not sure how well that could control... Actually the VB had a very solid controller. That's the best thing you can say about the system. It was comfortable with easy and intuitive button placement. In fact I still say the VB's shoulder buttons make the most sense of any shoulder buttons ever, being placed on the BACK of the controller instead of the top.

So not in stores for demo yet? Is Nintendo banking on ROFL 3D LET'S BUY IT
Where's the incredibly embarrassing kiosk where I have to wait for the 10 year old to finish so I can complain and sit Indian style and make the mothers worried?

I can see VB games as d/l from the store. Crimson-vision and everything. But isn't there a Mario game? And a f-zero game? Now I'm making shit up. But I know I heard of a Mario game. Thanks for infoos!

Mario Clash, yes, though it was basically the original Mario Bros (not Super Mario Bros.) with some depth (pseudo 3D gameplay like Wario Land VB). F-Zero? Would Captain Falcon's car be the "Red Falcon"?

Anyway, Nintendo doesn't really need to try. They pretty much dominate the handheld market. Well, there's "smart phones" too, but with so many competing standards, plus the fact that people select their phone based on the network they want, it isn't exactly as bustling a true gaming competitor as it could be. It doesn't help that as far as truly great games go, they don't really put many on cell phones. Most games are these small throw away games you can probably get for free at Newgrounds.com , which explains why the average price is a dollar or two. I'm not saying that the hardware isn't up to it, but generally the really good ones end up on other portables like the DS anyway. All said and done though, it really comes down to controls. Touch controls on Apple stuff is great, better than the DS in fact since it's "multi touch" and all, but from personal experience I can say that it can't completely replace a good set of actual buttons. There's a serious lack of tactile feedback with touch screens that only buttons can solve. If Apple ever decides to add in a sliding control with d-pad and all, and woo developers to get really good exclusive games (allowing them to charge higher prices for games that cost more to produce is a start), then there's a pretty good threat to Nintendo right there.

That said, another big problem for Apple, Android, and the rest is their region specific popularity. Sega's systems had a similar problem. The Master System only really did decently in Europe, the Sega Genesis/Megadrive, while not a failure in Japan, only actually competed with the SNES in America, and the Saturn only did well in Japan (mainly because Segata Sanshiro was murdering anyone who didn't buy one). In this case, Japan has a nation-wide industry standard for cell phones. The standard is updated every few years or so, but the main advantage is no matter where you get your cell phone and no matter who your provider is, programs "just work" on all of them. I think this is a great thing which American cell phone companies never really bothered copying (though American cell phone companies in general are some of the worst in the world). iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone? None of those even attempted to emulate the Japanese standard, and all of them use their own mutually exclusive setup. Aside from those ones, there's still a whole garden of other "smart phones" with their own exclusive OSes and software. About the only commonality to be had in any modern US phone is Java, but that doesn't get one very far. Android, to be fair, is an open standard that multiple cell phone makers can, and are, using. A standard may yet emerge that the industry can agree upon. However, that's yet to happen and until it does, it makes things very difficult for anyone who wants to use their cell phone as their exclusive handheld gaming device, and it also makes it very difficult for developers to get their stuff on all the infinite variations out there, or for those variations to "talk" to each other online.

As an aside, this is also the reason why there's a number of big cell phone exclusive games in Japan that never get released here. The game companies making these cell phone games in Japan see a huge market there, but a very thinly divided market here and don't consider the effort of distributing it to all those variations just to make sure the net is cast wide enough to be worth it. As a result, we have to wait for them to decide to port games to a different non-cell phone system to have any chance of actually playing those games here. Examples of that are Final Fantasy IV: The After Years and Kingdom Hearts coded, which only got translated when they were ported to the Wii and the DS respectively. Final Fantasy VII Before Crisis is the only significant Squeenix cell phone game that hasn't been ported to another system, and consequently has never been translated.

Basically, the 3DS has a clean shot at dominating the handheld GAMING market if not the handheld market in general simply because American companies' poor handling of cell phone standards has left gaming markets on even modern smartphones a bit of a flea market of garbage (with a few notable exceptions that are available elsewhere anyway).

I played Pilot Wings 3D for a few minutes today. It was 3D.

Pop out 3D or depthy 3D?

I would conversation with your post DJ but I am on a phone, which fits your post ironically.

Quote:Mario Clash, yes, though it was basically the original Mario Bros (not Super Mario Bros.) with some depth (pseudo 3D gameplay like Wario Land VB). F-Zero? Would Captain Falcon's car be the "Red Falcon"?

There was the tragically cancelled Zero Racers for Virtual Boy, it was one of the three pretty much finished games Nintendo canned in mid '96 when they decided to abandon the VB instead of attempting to save the platform. Zero Racers basically uses a Red Alarm-like visual style, except it's a racing game. The vehicles fly through tunnels. Looked awesome in the Nintendo Power preview back in '96, it was one of my most wanted VB titles... I still hope for the rom to leak sometime or something. Or maybe for Nintendo to put it in the 3DS Virtual Console or something, if they add VB games? That would be incredibly awesome... and to a slightly lesser degree the same goes for the other two of those games, Bound High (this one does have a leaked rom available, it's a topdown platformer/puzzle-ish game where you, well, control a ball thing that bounces onto tiles, enemies, etc) and Dragon Hopper (another topdown platformer-ish thing involving jumping up towards the screen so there's something 3d in it, hasn't leaked if it's out there).

The 3D screen is designed to do "window style" 3D, it can't do "pop out" 3D. Honestly I prefer that. Things popping out of the screen is very distracting and best saved for terrible "3Dsploitation" movies like Jaws 3D. Looking like a window looks great anyway. There are a few 3D TVs on displays at Best Buys around here that do the window method, and they look really nice, but only from the right angle.

Just saw the first 3DS commercial I've seen on TV. Hmm... Well it shows a bunch of people playing it with those really retro 3D glasses fading away from them. It gets the point across pretty well. I just wish that the introduction wasn't a scream. I don't like screams in commercials...

I had the privilege to be at PAX East this year, and was able to try out several games on the 3DS. The 3D effect on it is pretty impressive, and with a $249 price point, I'll probably end up with one sooner rather than later.

Interesting... I wonder why no pop-out. It doesn't look as though objects are 'floating' in front of you? There were several reports that 3ds games 'pop' while DS and DSi games played on the 3DS simply had depth. Now I hear the 3DS games are depth only and DS/DSi games have ZERO 3D effect added! ...wuhappened? D;

DS/DSi games would have to be completely remade to have 3D effects.

I hadn't heard anything like that lazy. Further I'd be very surprised to hear of any screen that can do BOTH effects. I think the 3DS just plays DS games without doing anything to them.

GR, technically with the right framework displaying CERTAIN 2D games in 3D is doable. For any DS game that's rendered in 3D internally, such as Mario 64 DS, the trick would be, say, getting a second processor that gets to "look" at that 3D data, create a second camera image slightly off from it, and send both to the display. It's doable in the same way that emulators can render N64 games in super high resolutions, but it may not look that good in all situations and it would take some significant work. Feasible, but not something Nintendo cared to do.

Hmm...

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

While supporting handicapped players is fine, to go as far as to make it your policy to stray away from actually utilizing the new feature so that those that can't process 3D won't be left out seems to defeat the point of the product. If the 3D isn't going to help gameplay and it ends up being paired down to merely a cosmetic gimic, what's the point?

They didn't go as far with their Wii analogy as they could have. The Kinect, for example. If they ended up not designing games around dancing because some people can't even stand up unassisted, it would be rather disappointing.

The unfortunate reality is, when it comes to handicaps, there's simply some things that one can't do. It's very good to think of those handicaps if it can be helped, but if there is no work around without removing a major point of something, then you should simply go on with it. I also think that software specifically targeting the handicapped is important, and in fact I found an interesting site for software (including games) made for the blind.

http://www.blindsoftware.com/SoftwareBli...=45&swreg=

That looks (sounds?) interesting. Thanks to swimming in the privilege of vision, I can enjoy it too (though I am likely not going to be as skilled as someone who naturally uses audio cues for navigation), but of course that software isn't about me. All I'm saying is that the key thing is that such software isn't made with an industry wide agreement to the exclusion of ever making software for those with vision.

I think it'll work out well at any rate. The vast majority of games released on the 3DS, much like on the DS and the Wii, aren't even going to make full use of the new feature for game play. Thanks to the slider those games are all going to work just fine. I would love to see games that make use of that depth for new game play mechanics, if it can be done. It is unfortunate that such games will naturally exclude a portion of the population from fully enjoying them. Certain steps can be taken, depending on how the game is designed, to help this along, but in the end certain exclusions are inevitable. I think the new game play designs will be worth it in spite of that though. I also say this with a friend who has a "lazy eye" and can't see the 3D in a 3D movie (and most likely won't be able to see the 3D in the 3DS). That friend is going to be annoyed by it.

In conclusion...

<img src="http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/1215486810_UvvEB-L.jpg">

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Hmm...

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

While supporting handicapped players is fine, to go as far as to make it your policy to stray away from actually utilizing the new feature so that those that can't process 3D won't be left out seems to defeat the point of the product. If the 3D isn't going to help gameplay and it ends up being paired down to merely a cosmetic gimic, what's the point?

They didn't go as far with their Wii analogy as they could have. The Kinect, for example. If they ended up not designing games around dancing because some people can't even stand up unassisted, it would be rather disappointing.

The unfortunate reality is, when it comes to handicaps, there's simply some things that one can't do. It's very good to think of those handicaps if it can be helped, but if there is no work around without removing a major point of something, then you should simply go on with it. I also think that software specifically targeting the handicapped is important, and in fact I found an interesting site for software (including games) made for the blind.

http://www.blindsoftware.com/SoftwareBli...=45&swreg=

That looks (sounds?) interesting. Thanks to swimming in the privilege of vision, I can enjoy it too (though I am likely not going to be as skilled as someone who naturally uses audio cues for navigation), but of course that software isn't about me. All I'm saying is that the key thing is that such software isn't made with an industry wide agreement to the exclusion of ever making software for those with vision.

I think it'll work out well at any rate. The vast majority of games released on the 3DS, much like on the DS and the Wii, aren't even going to make full use of the new feature for game play. Thanks to the slider those games are all going to work just fine. I would love to see games that make use of that depth for new game play mechanics, if it can be done. It is unfortunate that such games will naturally exclude a portion of the population from fully enjoying them. Certain steps can be taken, depending on how the game is designed, to help this along, but in the end certain exclusions are inevitable. I think the new game play designs will be worth it in spite of that though. I also say this with a friend who has a "lazy eye" and can't see the 3D in a 3D movie (and most likely won't be able to see the 3D in the 3DS). That friend is going to be annoyed by it.

In conclusion...

<img src="http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/1215486810_UvvEB-L.jpg">

I don't quite know what to say about that DJ.. With that post I'm truly speechless.
Part of me is pissed off because without a doubt that is the most insensitive post I have ever seen to people with disabilities. And part of me doesn't want a product abandoned.. So here's my reply..

I give you a cookie..
But it's a buck McNasty cookie.. Covered in aids.
But the cookie comes with 10,000 cash..
But the cash was stolen and the police know you have it..
Faeries give Danial Tosh, hepatitis d.

Fin..

I'm not sure what you mean by "intensive".

Anyway, I can think of one thing that will immediately be easier with 3D, and that's 3D platform jumping. No more depending on spot shadows and spinning the camera around to judge the distance you need to jump.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "intensive".

Anyway, I can think of one thing that will immediately be easier with 3D, and that's 3D platform jumping. No more depending on spot shadows and spinning the camera around to judge the distance you need to jump.

Shit! Typo.. It's fixed now..

I am not sure I understand what you mean. I thought I made my point clearly without trying to say we shouldn't care about helping the handicapped.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:I am not sure I understand what you mean. I thought I made my point clearly without trying to say we shouldn't care about helping the handicapped.

You can't have it both ways.. Either you make all games handy capable or disabled people can suck a hotdog.. Personally I'm on the fence about the issue.. I think reasonable accommodations by a company is not only a smart business move but just plain the wright thing to do.. There's a simple solution.. Just make the 3D optional on those 3D geared games.. Make some kind of 2D mode as a option. That being said.. I'm also against mega corporations using corporate leverage to sensor a art form.

That's a false dichotomy.

Firstly, the 3DS has a built in slider to adjust the level of 3D in any game. I referred to this. Anyone that only sees a blurry image can slide the slider to full 2D and the problem is gone. That's a great feature that does accommodate the issue. My post was about how some games could be designed so that the 3D gives visual cues you need to play the game. These could be displayed in 2D just like any other with the slider, but since the 3D would hypothetically be essential to the game play itself, it would mean those without stereoscopic vision would be at a disadvantage, possibly not being able to play the game effectively because of that. I was explaining that I don't think Nintendo should shy away from designing new game play experiences and also that many games will end up being just like 2D games anyway and thus fully playable by 3D handicapped players, which while lazy in the sense of not fully utilizing the new gimmick, is also good as it'll provide a wide amount of content that 3D handicapped can still play. In other words, yes, you can have it both ways.

Secondly, you still didn't explain how I was being insensitive.

DJ I agree with you except I don't believe the 3D effect on the 3ds is going to really help anyone with playing the game. If the platform is 32 feet to scale, is it going to LOOK like 32 feet? How does this relate to the a dual ability the game player can perform on the character? Let's assume the char can jump 50 feet. While the 3D has given the illusion of depth it hasn't actually painted a realistic picture of that distance, so the issues are all the same. You won't know if you can make that jump until you've practiced with jumping and that specific area. Now it simply has a new layer of visual candy beyond polys and shades, but nothing that's going to benefit the gameplayer. Not that I can tell anyway.

You will know when something is close, when something is far and that's about it. Now menus on the other hand I think can truly benefit from 3D. If they are set as nearest to the players field of vision as possible it will give an illusion of a hud while action is taking place beyond that hud. This puts the all-important lifebar, radar, etc up close and personal with the player. Another good example would be a reticule in shooting games, the reticule can actually appear to be a few inches from your eyes or floating 'first' in the layers of depth.

But yeqh the initial claim was that DS and DSi games could be played in a toned down 3D. so wth happund. The other claim was a 3D internet browser which I have not seen mentioned. The goggles, doing nothing and what not.

The comic reminded me of Event Horizon.

That "HUD" idea is interesting, but the 3D in the 3DS isn't capable of that. As I said it's "window" 3D.

It takes time to get used to the 3D in the games, because the distance of the "virtual eyes" in the game world is generally going to be different than the actual distance between your eyes, and since the 3D in the game is basically an illusion that doesn't actually take the position of your own eyes into account (it simply requires that you have two of them and your brain is capable of mixing two images), then it'll have a different "feel" than reality. Hmm, I wonder if they could use the face recognition feature of the DS as well as the 3D camera feature to accurately measure the position of your eyes relative to each other and then design the 3D's internal cameras in games to be that same distance and position apart? Anyway, once your eyes adjust to the in-world 3D, you'll be able to judge distance between yourself and the next platform pretty well, at least as well as in real life. It should allow for more accurate jumping in that way. I base this on how good I got at judging positions of obstacles in Red Alarm on the VB as opposed to a game like Star Fox. I'm pretty good at Star Fox after a LOT of practice, but it's only thanks to memory and other visual cues that I got that good at being able to judge distance. In Red Alarm, I'm a lot better at avoiding things just because I can use a very natural visual cue to determine it, binocular vision. It doesn't need to match up to reality, or appear to be as big as actual sky scrapers or something, it just needs to make use of that system to give you a sense of depth relative to the other objects in that world. (That said, Red Alarm's wire frame graphics are pretty bad, and the biggest mistake I make is confusing something that's solid for something I can move through.)

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/24/report...about-100/

This is interesting. I don't mind Nintendo making a profit from this. However, it does make me wonder why they didn't go for a $200 price point and still make roughly double what the components cost. I think they'd still have a lot of profit even after considering marketing and so on, and traditionally Nintendo has always aimed for cheaper price points on their handhelds, so it is odd that the 3DS would be so expensive compared to previous ones.

Here's the launch prices I was able to find for Nintendo's previous handhelds. I also calculated for inflation using this site: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ , so I note the year it was launched too. I'll only note the internal hardware upgrades rather than the remodels (the remodels are almost universally cheaper than the first versions anyway).

Game Boy: Launched in 1989 for $90, adjusted for inflation in 2011 to $160.63
Virtual Boy: Launched in 1995 for $180, adjusted for inflation in 2011 to $261.39
Game Boy Color: Launched in 1998 for $80, adjusted for inflation in 2011 to $108.62
Game Boy Advance: Launched in 2001 for $150, adjusted for inflation in 2011 to $187.55
Nintendo DS: Launched in 2004 for $150, adjusted for inflation in 2011 to $175.74
Nintendo DSi: Launched in 2009 for $170, adjusted for inflation in 2011 to $175.37

You'll note that even adjusted for inflation, only one of these systems even break $200 (Virtual Boy, actually exceeding the 3DS price just barely after inflation). The 3DS is the most expensive handheld Nintendo has yet sold, by a large margin, and I'm just not sure why. Other things I noticed: The inflation since the late 80's is pretty surprising. Also, the Gameboy was originally launched at $90? Well apparently so! Every source I could find online (Wikipedia included) backs that up. Neat. Also, I never did get a DSi, making it the first actual hardware update on a Nintendo handheld I haven't got.

Honestly, I'm not getting it just yet. I just can't afford it right now. I certainly will at some point, probably soon, just not now. I just wonder how long Nintendo can maintain that price point. Will it be popular enough to really sell crazy numbers like the much cheaper Nintendo DS, or will they end up dropping it by at least $50 by the end of the year? I don't think the fact it's in the same range as the Virtual Boy is a "bad sign" or anything, since the VB failed for all sorts of reasons that don't apply to the 3DS. It just doesn't help. It also doesn't help that in addition this is the portable with the lowest battery life of their handhelds so far. That is sure to improve with remodels that reduce the energy requirements of the hardware (as well as possibly improving the screen so that it can be viewed from a wider angle and still see the 3D image).

And inflation's probably why they're trying again to raise game prices, Game Boy games were $30 back in the early '90s and DS games are $30-40 now. In Japan they cost more, as much as console games, but not here, and they're trying again to raise prices, like how the PS360 raised console game prices to $60... though of course many SNES, Genesis, and N64 games cost way over $50, it was the Playstation that set that standard. PC games had always been more affordable though anyway, and still are -- still $50 in general. Anyway, it is interesting how game prices in general have not gone up with inflation. I'm not enough of an economist to be able to figure out why, or how that affects things, but I have to think that it can't be helping the industry... but on the other hand many people aren't making that much more than they were either, really, so it makes some sense. Not everything keeps going up in price -- computers for instance, those have on average gone down in price each decade versus the last one.

Quote:That is sure to improve with remodels that reduce the energy requirements of the hardware (as well as possibly improving the screen so that it can be viewed from a wider angle and still see the 3D image).

They've said that they don't have a "lite" model planned, though, the system fills the case competely full and they could not easily make it any smaller. Maybe there'll be a 3DS XL? But yeah, they need something with better battery life, I agree.

They never have remodels planned when the first model comes out, but eventually they come out anyway. The original Game Boy "Brick Boy" model took up the whole case too, but a few years later, they did eventually shrink it down to fit into the "Pocket". The GBA took up a large amount of space, but they were eventually able to fit it all into the SP.

Give it a year or two. Moore's Law will kick in and they'll be able to shrink it.

I was surprised when I held it how small it seemed, then again I play on a DSi XL. It's about the size of a current DS Lite.

I thought there was just a DSi and DSi XL, what's a DSi Lite?

Oops, meant DS Lite.

Ah yeah I see. Yeah, that's what I'd read too.

http://kotaku.com/#!5785954/how-the-3ds-...o-about-it

Hmm... Yeah so here's an issue. The screens have a higher resolution, but it isn't perfectly divisible by DS game resolution, so it has to be "smoothed" artificially to get around the "native resolution" issue of LCD screens. Some have complained that this makes it look bad. I can see that. You can also hold down select and start to simply force the games to display in their actual resolution, but it seems like it's incredibly small when you do that, much more so than GBA games displayed on a DS screen. Further, for some odd reason, when you turn on DS games there's a rather lengthy load time. The load times during the game are identical, but that first load is oddly long.

Thing is, these two issues probably aren't ever getting fixed, considering Nintendo's track record for shoddy firmware updates. About the biggest updates ever on the Wii are the addition of a visible clock on the main menu and being able to actually run applications stored on the memory card. Woo....

The GB and GB Pocket were a full six or seven years apart, though. It's only with the GBA that Nintendo really started with this "new upgrade every few years" system. Also, the 3DS already is similar in size to the DS Lite. Do you really think that they'll be able to make it smaller soon? I'm not so sure.

Quote:Hmm... Yeah so here's an issue. The screens have a higher resolution, but it isn't perfectly divisible by DS game resolution, so it has to be "smoothed" artificially to get around the "native resolution" issue of LCD screens. Some have complained that this makes it look bad. I can see that. You can also hold down select and start to simply force the games to display in their actual resolution, but it seems like it's incredibly small when you do that, much more so than GBA games displayed on a DS screen. Further, for some odd reason, when you turn on DS games there's a rather lengthy load time. The load times during the game are identical, but that first load is oddly long.

Thing is, these two issues probably aren't ever getting fixed, considering Nintendo's track record for shoddy firmware updates. About the biggest updates ever on the Wii are the addition of a visible clock on the main menu and being able to actually run applications stored on the memory card. Woo....

Hmm, interesting, I hadn't thought of it but that is absolutely true, isn't it. LCD native resolutions are such a pain, one reason why CRTs are better... I've noticed that with GBA games on the DS, but it's only a slight shrink so it's not so bad, but with the 3DS it really is either "upscaled and filtered" or "really small", isn't it. But on the other hand my DS screen (lower one only anyway) is all scratched, and the L button only rarely works (and sometimes R doesn't either), and one of the hinges is half broken off (happened when I dropped it), and the stylus's tip is gone, so in comparison I doubt the 3DS scaling thing is so bad... yeah, the shape my DS is in is getting kind of sad. :) Even so though, I doubt I'll get a 3DS right away, $250 is a lot.

Define "soon". I expect they'll have a new model in a year or two. It's Moore's Law that they'll be able to shrink down the components. I don't need the system itself to be smaller. It's just a matter of shrinking down the chips on the board so they require less power to run. That happens all the time even without major "updates". The 360 for example had 4 or so revisions even before the one that they actually advertised, and all of them involved things like combining chips and shrinking dies and new processes and so on. The later ones actually used a different power supply that isn't compatible with the earlier ones because of this. In fact, remember that Game Gear of mine, the one that wasn't the Majesco remodel but an earlier remodel when Sega was still making it? Yeah, turns out looking inside both they combined two chips into one there too.

As for CRT vs LCD. "One of" is now "the only". Any other reason you could name has pretty much been eliminated by current technology. Viewing angles, black levels, and so on have all been dramatically improved. The native resolution issue however, that goes down to the very basics of LCD design. That's not something that can ever actually be removed, and so CRTs will always be better in that respect. Fortunately, so long as a resolution is perfectly divisible into a screen's "native" resolution, that isn't an issue. Unfortunately, in the case of the 3DS and previous DS games, that isn't the case, so yes, a filter gets used. It's annoying. I'll have to see how big the screen actually is. If the screen size is big enough, maybe that really big shrinking effect still leaves it at the same size as a DS screen. In defense of LCD screens, for TVs the "native resolution" problem isn't really a problem. Those are set up generally so that TV resolution slides right into the HD resolutions, so it isn't an issue. It's just a matter of keeping the old aspect resolution when playing those old games. For computers, it's trickier. A good LCD screen will allow you to maintain the right aspect resolution and "double" the image until it fits but without needing a filter. Sometimes this leaves black bars above and below, but they are generally small and easy to ignore. This eliminates the native resolution problem without resorting to a filter pretty well.

I honestly don't think I want it smaller. There's such a thing as too small (GBA Micro, anyone?).

Also, I has.

Again I'm not talking about making the system smaller. I'm talking about shrinking the internal components to reduce power consumption.