So here we are, two days since Nintendo finally lifted the lid on the 3DS (in Japan, at least.) Does anyone else feel a little bit like what we found out really wasn't all that much? Like we knew it all already?
That's not entirely true, of course. We actually now know quite a number of new little bits and pieces about the system, like when it's coming out (February in Japan, March everywhere else) and also how much it'll cost on Nintendo's home turf. Many of the details we've picked up were simply filling in cracks in our knowledge of a system that Nintendo already really explained pretty well at debut this past E3—a system that is really just doing a lot of things the DS and DSi have already done, only better. But even just "better" might be enough to make a critical mass.
The key positioning for the 3DS, above and beyond its simple pitch of the glasses-free 3D visuals, is this: a device that is always on, always looking for interesting things that you pass by as you take it with you everywhere you go. The actual user interface aside, it is actually quite a bit like how I imagined what we thought was called "CrossPass" would work; the 3DS doesn't really "turn off," but instead goes into hibernation, keeping in radio contact with other 3DS systems you pass by (StreetPass) as well as stations dedicated to broadcasting new kinds of content (SpotPass). We did find out that it also does this while you're playing games, though, too.
The most exciting part of all this is StreetPass. I've always been interested in Tag Mode, always tried it out when I could—but even though I've owned Nintendo DS series systems since 2004 and never really put them down, I've only ever got one truly random tag: a single Bark Mode hit in Nintendogs. It's true that I do now have over 40 tags in Dragon Quest IX, but those were exclusively gathered through organized meetups with other interested players. Given Tag Mode was always buried somewhere in the game it was part of and, while active, dedicated your DS to broadcasting only that one game's data... and then you rarely, if ever, got hits for it... it's no surprise it became self-defeating, with no payback to speak of meaning nobody else was trying it, either.
With the way StreetPass works, though, it doesn't seem a stretch to say that we could see 3DS systems start lighting up even in the less densely-populated markets like here in the U.S. It's probably never going to work on a freeway commute, of course. But it's got the potential to work for anyone who takes public transportation, goes out to lunch, goes to malls... basically, anywhere it's likely anyone's carrying a 3DS at all, since every single one sold will StreetPass both while playing any game and default to doing it when not in use, for all games and even just to trade Miis even if no games are in play. And in a very Nintendo-y move that I perhaps might have seen coming if I'd thought about it harder, but was still rather surprised by, one more way they're encouraging you to leave your 3DS on and carry it with you is building in a pedometer app. (As current user of Personal Trainer: Walking, this is right up my alley.)
But that's only part of the picture, of course. A key piece of the Pass puzzle is the oft-overlooked docking station. Many people know about it, of course—though many missed it on display at E3, since it wasn't talked about, it's front and center now that it's bundled with the 3DS. I have thought for some time that it was very important for the operation of what we only knew of as "Tag Mode Plus," because even though we know from experience that Tag Mode is a low-power application that can run for awhile—days, some say—we still have batteries to worry about—but Nintendo took it one step further. The dock provides an easy-to-use, habit-forming place for a 3DS user to put their system every day, keeping its battery charge up and lessening the chance that they'll experience negative feelings about StreetPass. (Mr. Iwata also noted the 3DS will use "faster wireless" when it's in the dock, presumably for pulling down information from your home Internet connection... but how that works exactly is still a bit of a mystery for today.)
I am slightly concerned about Pass takeup among developers, though. Its capability set appears to almost entirely mirror WiiConnect24, except with passersby replacing the Wii Address Book and home Wi-Fi supplemented with SpotPass stations (at least in Japan.) As we all know, not even Nintendo themselves really used WiiConnect24 to its full potential. That said, I have some hope here, since I expect practically every developer in Japan has the example of the DQIX phenomenon fresh in their mind, with street corners full of players all gathered together... hopefully, it serves as inspiration.
I've long bemoaned the lack of interest in Nintendo's download offerings, particularly as I think they're rather rich with interesting content—DSiWare in particular. Although there's nothing that's particularly new about their plans for 3DSWare, they do seem to be chipping away at a number of problems that have plagued their earlier offerings.
Probably the biggest complaint about Nintendo's download services thus far has been storage space. Wii got a fix for this; DSi did not. The problem is that WiiWare and DSiWare games are built expecting to use system-internal storage for everything. Wii got a workaround in the form of a separate Wii Menu that copied games to internal Flash before running them; DSi, to date, has nothing remotely like this—as I'll be happy to complain to you about if you ask me how many times I've had to swap things in and out of my DSi's main memory since I started buying DSiWare at the platform's launch. 3DS does both systems better by using SD—Nintendo includes an SD card in the system bundle, to keep the "extra purchase required" problem from surfacing—for storage.
To kick off the new download service, Nintendo will be offering both emulated Game Boy software and other classics individually reworked for 3D display. And we now know for certain that at least some DSiWare will be available, which is very good news for those who didn't see the DSi as its own platform and thus were unable to buy any of it. We know this because Nintendo is now offering system-to-system transfers of downloadable software, subject to a limit on the number of transfers—both from your old DSi to your new 3DS and even between 3DS systems.
There's also one more promise Mr. Iwata made: shopping is going to be a much better experience—hopefully addressing the other big complaint about their current offerings. We don't know how much better yet, of course, nor how it will work in the end, but we're supposed to effectively get a combined Nintendo Channel/Shop Channel service on the 3DS which operates much more quickly and efficiently. I'm eager to see this in action, but I may have to wait until I get one in my hands. If it delivers, Nintendo will have taken every step they need to in order to make me happy, personally—though since I'd like to see 3DSWare succeed more, I would like to make the friendly suggestion that they invest a lot more in more promotion of the service above and beyond on-device. I hate being upsold by Microsoft at every turn on my 360, but one must admit they've got promotion down hardcore.
Two other aspects of 3DS really caught my eye. The first was the new Mii Studio—and not just because it meant Miis were first-class citizens on the 3DS; that's something I frankly expected—but because of the neat new way to make one in the first place: via camera. I have to geek out a little bit because that's just plain cool. I guess it could end up just not really working out at all in the end, but I have to give a round of applause for trying even if it doesn't.
The other thing is the Home menu—specifically, what you can do inside it, like browsing the Web. Suffice it to say I'm really looking forward to not having to juggle a DS and iPod like I do now when I need to pull up a page with some game information online. I almost wonder if it might actually be saving game state entirely, putting a game to sleep much like I theorized... it seems plausible, since a lot of what the 3DS calls its own feature set was inspired by the DS, but radically improved.
So now what? Well... it's time to sit and wait some more. The system won't be in anyone's hands until February. Some brave souls are going to import, of course, though they're obviously running a huge risk of being region-locked for good—I suspect, based on the DSi's relative lack of hackedness, it'll be a long time before 3DS is running region-free. As for me, I'm content to wait for the North American launch this March, particularly as there's more than enough to keep me occupied on the DS, DSi, and Wii yet to come. But when it comes... I'm really excited to check out the system's new features. I'm still not really sure what I want out of the software—there's not quite so much really neat new stuff as there was for DS—but it's almost certainly coming. In the meantime, I can wait, and dream of the possibilities.
That's not entirely true, of course. We actually now know quite a number of new little bits and pieces about the system, like when it's coming out (February in Japan, March everywhere else) and also how much it'll cost on Nintendo's home turf. Many of the details we've picked up were simply filling in cracks in our knowledge of a system that Nintendo already really explained pretty well at debut this past E3—a system that is really just doing a lot of things the DS and DSi have already done, only better. But even just "better" might be enough to make a critical mass.
The key positioning for the 3DS, above and beyond its simple pitch of the glasses-free 3D visuals, is this: a device that is always on, always looking for interesting things that you pass by as you take it with you everywhere you go. The actual user interface aside, it is actually quite a bit like how I imagined what we thought was called "CrossPass" would work; the 3DS doesn't really "turn off," but instead goes into hibernation, keeping in radio contact with other 3DS systems you pass by (StreetPass) as well as stations dedicated to broadcasting new kinds of content (SpotPass). We did find out that it also does this while you're playing games, though, too.
StreetPass and SpotPass
The most exciting part of all this is StreetPass. I've always been interested in Tag Mode, always tried it out when I could—but even though I've owned Nintendo DS series systems since 2004 and never really put them down, I've only ever got one truly random tag: a single Bark Mode hit in Nintendogs. It's true that I do now have over 40 tags in Dragon Quest IX, but those were exclusively gathered through organized meetups with other interested players. Given Tag Mode was always buried somewhere in the game it was part of and, while active, dedicated your DS to broadcasting only that one game's data... and then you rarely, if ever, got hits for it... it's no surprise it became self-defeating, with no payback to speak of meaning nobody else was trying it, either.
With the way StreetPass works, though, it doesn't seem a stretch to say that we could see 3DS systems start lighting up even in the less densely-populated markets like here in the U.S. It's probably never going to work on a freeway commute, of course. But it's got the potential to work for anyone who takes public transportation, goes out to lunch, goes to malls... basically, anywhere it's likely anyone's carrying a 3DS at all, since every single one sold will StreetPass both while playing any game and default to doing it when not in use, for all games and even just to trade Miis even if no games are in play. And in a very Nintendo-y move that I perhaps might have seen coming if I'd thought about it harder, but was still rather surprised by, one more way they're encouraging you to leave your 3DS on and carry it with you is building in a pedometer app. (As current user of Personal Trainer: Walking, this is right up my alley.)
But that's only part of the picture, of course. A key piece of the Pass puzzle is the oft-overlooked docking station. Many people know about it, of course—though many missed it on display at E3, since it wasn't talked about, it's front and center now that it's bundled with the 3DS. I have thought for some time that it was very important for the operation of what we only knew of as "Tag Mode Plus," because even though we know from experience that Tag Mode is a low-power application that can run for awhile—days, some say—we still have batteries to worry about—but Nintendo took it one step further. The dock provides an easy-to-use, habit-forming place for a 3DS user to put their system every day, keeping its battery charge up and lessening the chance that they'll experience negative feelings about StreetPass. (Mr. Iwata also noted the 3DS will use "faster wireless" when it's in the dock, presumably for pulling down information from your home Internet connection... but how that works exactly is still a bit of a mystery for today.)
I am slightly concerned about Pass takeup among developers, though. Its capability set appears to almost entirely mirror WiiConnect24, except with passersby replacing the Wii Address Book and home Wi-Fi supplemented with SpotPass stations (at least in Japan.) As we all know, not even Nintendo themselves really used WiiConnect24 to its full potential. That said, I have some hope here, since I expect practically every developer in Japan has the example of the DQIX phenomenon fresh in their mind, with street corners full of players all gathered together... hopefully, it serves as inspiration.
Downloadable content
I've long bemoaned the lack of interest in Nintendo's download offerings, particularly as I think they're rather rich with interesting content—DSiWare in particular. Although there's nothing that's particularly new about their plans for 3DSWare, they do seem to be chipping away at a number of problems that have plagued their earlier offerings.
Probably the biggest complaint about Nintendo's download services thus far has been storage space. Wii got a fix for this; DSi did not. The problem is that WiiWare and DSiWare games are built expecting to use system-internal storage for everything. Wii got a workaround in the form of a separate Wii Menu that copied games to internal Flash before running them; DSi, to date, has nothing remotely like this—as I'll be happy to complain to you about if you ask me how many times I've had to swap things in and out of my DSi's main memory since I started buying DSiWare at the platform's launch. 3DS does both systems better by using SD—Nintendo includes an SD card in the system bundle, to keep the "extra purchase required" problem from surfacing—for storage.
To kick off the new download service, Nintendo will be offering both emulated Game Boy software and other classics individually reworked for 3D display. And we now know for certain that at least some DSiWare will be available, which is very good news for those who didn't see the DSi as its own platform and thus were unable to buy any of it. We know this because Nintendo is now offering system-to-system transfers of downloadable software, subject to a limit on the number of transfers—both from your old DSi to your new 3DS and even between 3DS systems.
There's also one more promise Mr. Iwata made: shopping is going to be a much better experience—hopefully addressing the other big complaint about their current offerings. We don't know how much better yet, of course, nor how it will work in the end, but we're supposed to effectively get a combined Nintendo Channel/Shop Channel service on the 3DS which operates much more quickly and efficiently. I'm eager to see this in action, but I may have to wait until I get one in my hands. If it delivers, Nintendo will have taken every step they need to in order to make me happy, personally—though since I'd like to see 3DSWare succeed more, I would like to make the friendly suggestion that they invest a lot more in more promotion of the service above and beyond on-device. I hate being upsold by Microsoft at every turn on my 360, but one must admit they've got promotion down hardcore.
Odds and ends
Two other aspects of 3DS really caught my eye. The first was the new Mii Studio—and not just because it meant Miis were first-class citizens on the 3DS; that's something I frankly expected—but because of the neat new way to make one in the first place: via camera. I have to geek out a little bit because that's just plain cool. I guess it could end up just not really working out at all in the end, but I have to give a round of applause for trying even if it doesn't.
The other thing is the Home menu—specifically, what you can do inside it, like browsing the Web. Suffice it to say I'm really looking forward to not having to juggle a DS and iPod like I do now when I need to pull up a page with some game information online. I almost wonder if it might actually be saving game state entirely, putting a game to sleep much like I theorized... it seems plausible, since a lot of what the 3DS calls its own feature set was inspired by the DS, but radically improved.
So now what? Well... it's time to sit and wait some more. The system won't be in anyone's hands until February. Some brave souls are going to import, of course, though they're obviously running a huge risk of being region-locked for good—I suspect, based on the DSi's relative lack of hackedness, it'll be a long time before 3DS is running region-free. As for me, I'm content to wait for the North American launch this March, particularly as there's more than enough to keep me occupied on the DS, DSi, and Wii yet to come. But when it comes... I'm really excited to check out the system's new features. I'm still not really sure what I want out of the software—there's not quite so much really neat new stuff as there was for DS—but it's almost certainly coming. In the meantime, I can wait, and dream of the possibilities.