The wait for all-new new IP from Nintendo continues (sigh), but while nothing they showed was spectacular, at least just about all of it looked good.  Zelda (looks good, but delayed to 2011), Metroid (looking great), DKC Returns (looks good, but doesn't take any chances), Epic Mickey (solid), GoldenEye 007 (need more control info), Kirby (new mechanic looks cool) and Kid Icarus (finally!) will likely all find their way into my collection.  I have no interest in DQ9, Golden Sun, Wii Party, and Mario Sports Mix (lame), but with the exception of the last one, they all look decent.  The promise of Star Fox 64, Mario Kart, a new Paper Mario, Bomberman, MGS3, FF, DQ, KH, and Chocobo Racing on 3DS are nice, but I wonder how well stuff like Street Fighter and Resident Evil will transfer over.  I also have my doubts as to when many of these things will see the light of day since the only 3DS game footage shown at all was for Kid Icarus (looked great, though).

I also want to point out that the 3D camera included with the 3DS is damn brilliant.  Women and casuals are going to love that, regardless of how useless it may be for games.  I'm mixed about the analog slider thing, though I don't like how far down it pushes the d-pad.  Hopefully some hands-on impressions from the blogs will come soon to discuss the comfort factor.

As for stuff that was not discussed that's pretty glaring, let's note that there were no details about the release timeframe of the 3DS, its price, or its download store.  The Vitality Sensor was also notably absent although EA and Ubisoft had their own versions of it at their respective press conferences, so perhaps Nintendo felt co-opted.

I know Nintendo had to keep its conference focused in the interest of time, but it should be interesting to see what other details come out once the press has the time to sit down and read through their kits.  There are probably a lot of lesser title announcements buried in there waiting to be revealed.

In comparison to Microsoft, I felt that Nintendo's conference had a lot less impact, but I know that I will be buying a lot more of Nintendo's games than Microsoft's games, but I'm also not typical.  Let's see what Sony has to say in 45 minutes.

SOLD.  And then some.

More than anything, I'm curious to see what the technical specs running under the 3DS's hood are.  Any word yet?

I thought the show was pants up until the 3DS. And the 3DS, well, I love it. I need one. The line up is stunning. Screenshots amazing - if they can really pull off that level of graphics in 3D at any kind of decent frame rate, I'll be very impressed. Looks great.

Tell ya the truth I think this was perfect for them. Sure a new IP is nice (the last ones I can really think of is Animal Crossing and Pikmin) but I feel like this is their attempt to go and win the "core" as Ms. Dunaway permanently labeled us. New DKC by Retro, fine, sign me up. Metroid is shaping up, awesome. Zelda is going back to its candy colored past, nice. Really this served to show that Nintendo still cares about us and wants to continue bringing us magical experiences (que Kirby). The only things they could do to improve is to release a main console that graphically and networking wise thats up to par or better than PS3 and 360 so we can get our Multi Console games back and new, fun games.

The 3DS thing was a shocker and very bold on Nintendo's part. I would have preferred to have seen actual video of the games but instead they said, "We can't really represent how awesome this is up here so let us bring the console to you."

Freakin' excellent work. Keep going. I'll ride your hype train all the way to the station. With promises of DQ and Golden Sun I think this will be excellent years for gaming.

That's Nintendo's usual M.O. when it comes to new hardware.  They'll make the announcement and reveal during E3, but then save the games and more concrete release details until the Tokyo Game Show in September.

There are loads of screenshots from the games though. The ones from MGS3 are really impressive. Mario Kart and a whole bunch
more. It is odd they didn't show them during the actual presentation given how great they look.

http://www.allgamesbeta.info/
http://www.allgamesbeta.info/2010/06/3d … -game.html
http://www.upload.ee/image/637669/3DS-Features.jpg

look at the lineup of planned games for the 3DS

look at it!

Damn.

The red colored 3DS looks sexy as hell.  Any shots of the black and gray yet?

I heard 3DS was supposed to surpass Wii, but it looks like being around PSP. Do Nintendo really think this is something that will become the platform for the next 5 years? Glad that it isn't so expensive though.

They've announced a price point for the 3DS already?  What is it?

I haven't seen a price point announced for 3DS yet.  As for the graphics, I agree that is seems to be around the PSP's level, although you have to remember that to do these in 3D the system is probably actually twice as powerful in order to make one image for each eye.

One thing maybe I didn't make a big enough deal about in my original post in Nintendo's lack of discussion about a download store.  The 3DS can have all the fancy tech in the world, but what's to stop Apple from putting out the same thing with the inevitable iPhone 5 next June?  If Nintendo can't make a competitive digital storefront, it will lose marketshare.  Sony is also expected to have a PSP2 somewhere in development for a release next year, so I hope Nintendo has more up its sleeve than we know about.

To me it looks like its actually better than PSP graphics. Everything looked smooth and crisp with none of the noticeable texture deficiencies of that particular system. For all intents and purposes with the 3d taken out I think the 3DS is probably a much stronger piece of hardware.

We'll see if this comment stands up though. I just know one thing. I need CastleVania and Metroid on it.

EDIT: PILOTWINGS 3DS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My assumption, but I'd be surprised if it's higher than $200. I worry we will play games with better graphics and much higher resolution on iPhone a few years later, but yeah, I should hold off judgement until I try the 3D thing.

Aim post:

Not sure about the new Nintendo 3DS. It looks cool and has all the all-in-one sellout stuff going for it to be popular and garner 3rd party support, but all my DS games that I really enjoy don't really require the touch screen (exception: Trauma Center).

hehe:
Rant About Shitty E3

why would this worry you

do you worry about the possibility that the sun will rise tomorrow

Another example of Miyamoto's genius:

Miyamoto discussing Nintendogs + Cats:

Go 3DS! Well, I'll be honest, I only care because I want the XL to go down in price.

Go 3DS! I only care because it's launching with a new Kid Icarus game!

Seriously, they could re-launch Virtual Boy with a new Kid Icarus game and I'd preorder. As is, 3DS looks kinda cool anyway, so will be nice to have.

Nintendo's is the only press conference that impressed me.

Zelda looks good (it's nice to see a mix of Wind Waker's cel shading with Twilight Princess's more mature look) and I'm sure the development team will do lots of cool things with the more accurate weapon controls.  Several of the other new Wii titles look nice as well and it's encouraging to know I'll be getting some use out of the system over the next year or so.

But let's face it, Nintendo's E3 presence this year is all about the 3DS, and with it they've managed to upstage Sony's Move and MS's Kinect when it was supposed to be their time to shine.

The design is what I had hoped for and expected, with added analog and motion controls and a larger top screen (I wish the top screen were even larger - it looks like it would fit in the current casing and I hope the resolution is high enough to allow them to do that in a future model), although a different, sleeker look compared to the current DS might have been nice.

Flaunting the much-requested Kid Icarus sequel as a new 3D adventure makes brilliant sense from a marketing perspective, as does its reported Sin & Punishment-like gameplay from a design one.

The 3rd party lineup is ridiculously massive (even if a lot of those titles won't see the light of day for a long time) with titles like Resident Evil, Street Fighter 4 and Metal Gear Solid showing surprising early support for "core" gaming.

People complaining about the graphics capabilities haven't been paying attention to what Nintendo's been doing over the past several years.  Nintendo obviously are not interested in providing bleeding-edge photorealistic graphics, in fact they are likely quite happy to be against it (and the added development costs it entails... the original DS was reported to have N64-level graphics upon its release, which was nothing special for its time).  They're about providing new experiences in affordable packages - that people are going to buy in droves.

What's interesting is the various channels of revenue this is going to open for Nintendo.  You can see it already with the announcements for Ocarina of Time and Starfox 64 3D - take fan favorite 3D games, give them a fresh coat of paint and a few tweaks, render them twice over for 3D and watch the sales come in.

You might even see the same thing happen for classic *2D* games, as implied by the tech demo for classic games in 3D.  You know that weak parallax effect that happens in poorly converted 3D movies?  Well for classic 2D games (not to mention the already announced new Paper Mario) it could actually be kind of cool, since that parallax effect is meant to be there in the first place.  I can totally see companies repackaging 2D series with the added 3D effect or offering them as individual downloads on 3DSware.

Speaking of which, the big question that remains for me (aside from release date and price, which I expect to be $180 or $200) is what kind of online storefront they'll have in place.  I wouldn't be surprised if they kept the physical media (to make retailers happy) while also making every title available for paid download (as an answer to Apple's App Store).

Anyhoo, obviously there's a lot that remains to be seen but I expect the 3DS to be another huge success.  Given the little time I've spent playing my own DS (the original model, which I bought on release), I'll wait to actually hold the system and see the screen and 3D effect for myself before buying, but unless Sony preempts them with a seriously impressive PSP2 (PSP-3D?) announcement, Kid Icarus, Street Fighter and Star Fox will be looking really nice in 3D on my next trans-Pacific flight.

Yes, Nintendo have shown they aren't currently interested in pushing graphics. For the most part, that didn't affect the DS negatively at all even though, as soon as the PSP was released, the DS felt severely underpowered. Many of the DS's best games just didn't need the graphical power.

The one downside to that, however, was that I felt the DS aged quicker. Especially with the low resolution, the DS feels like an ancient relic compared with even the PSP and now the iPhone.

So it's fine coming in under par with the graphics but I would say that doesn't future-proof the system. What's also different now is that, with Kid Icarus and especially things like Snake Eater, Nintendo have games that are looking to impress graphically. And, if they are to try to impress graphically, they better impress. It wasn't much of a factor with the early DS games. From what they're showing here, it is now.

The resolution in particular is one area that could potentially be a problem. Even with the PSP's lovely screen, because of the power behind the machine, the limitations in graphics are often down to the resolution of the screen more than anything else.

The 3DS has almost double the horizontal res on the top screen but, due to the 3D, that is halved. The rest of the resolution specs don't show anything more impressive than the current PSP or iPhone level, and the bottom screen comes in under I think. With the iPhone4 coming in at four times the current resolution, that's changing the standards. I think the 3DS could find itself falling down on resolution. And it's surprising to see that it doesn't seem to have FSAA.

That said, look at the line-up. It's stunning. That's got to be one of Nintendo's best show of third party support in many, many years. And, importantly, they got in there first - from a branding point of view, Nintendo are already market leaders in handheld 3D systems without having sold one unit. Just like they'll remain the market leaders in motion control no matter what Sony and MS do now. Getting in there first counts for a lot.

And I think it's great that they stuck so closely to the DS design - effectively they've already run through several iterations of this machine. It should be a far better device for it.

It remains to be seen what Sony come up with. I would be unsurprised if theirs is 3D too - they have already launched 3D gaming on the PS3 and I have a feeling (completely unsupported) that the bizarre initial announcement of the existence of the 3DS may have come from Nintendo finding out (or at least suspecting) that Sony were going to come out with a similar idea and they wanted to be out there first. But I think Nintendo have nothing to fear.

I reckon the 3DS will be absolutely huge and will definitely be a day one purchase for me.

regardless of gender, my talks with cats tend to be a lot more informative and rewarding than my talks with human beings.

I got a good laugh at the end of the Kid Icarus video, here: http://e3.nintendo.com/3ds/

(Awesome music, too.)

Interesting press conference, for sure. There was a lot I didn't care for or didn't have interest in, but a few things definitely caught my eye and made me rethink selling off my Wii. First off, Metroid: Other M looks goddamn ridiculous. I absolutely need that game in my life. My girlfriend wants to pick up a Wii for the apartment, so I'll hopefully be rockin' the hell out of that game come August 31st while she watches So You Think You Can Dance reruns on the DVR. It looks like Team Ninja found a great balance between Prime-style shooting/perspective and classic Metroid exploration with a 3D twist... and with ample amounts of action and badass-ness WANT. Also, Donkey Kong Country Returns? Yep. Sign me up. The 3DS looks damn cool and I'll be keeping my eye out on that one... hopefully the game library will deliver. If there's good app support, I'll be picking one of those up as well. After a year or two I finally have reason to keep an eye out on new stuff that's coming out!

My favorite part was the new Kirby game. I didn't care much for KDL3's crayon motif, but this looks like Paper Mario and LittleBigPlanet had the cutest baby in the world and it's all I can think about right now.
My second favorite part was when Iwata added '+ Cats' to the Nintendogs title and half the audience groaned. Cat owners, you can tell.

For all of Spector's long-windedness and unique terminology (they aren't hubs, they're QUEST ZONES), Epic Mickey looks like a pretty standard 3D platformer with a Mario Sunshine-like mechanic. I'm not sure I care about this one (and I'm somewhat irritated that he got his facts wrong on Steamboat Willie - it was the first Mickey cartoon with sound, an ironic screwup since he's keeping Mickey silent - and that people are gushing about a Willie segment as though Mickey Mania didn't have one 15 years ago, and Kingdom Hearts 2 more recently).

Did anyone else get a Sin & Punishment vibe off of Icarus?

Mii Party is probably the most disheartening game of the year, even moreso than Dead or Alive Paradise. Seriously, if your idea for improving Mario Party is to remove Mario, it's time for someone else to step in. I'll probably get Sports Mix, though.

I continue to wonder why Capcom insists on trying to put Resident Evil on portable systems; it's hard to be frightened of a zombie that's at best, the size of a small ferret. And fighting games on portables are double-ridiculous. Wake me when they get around to Megaman.

Totally disagree on both horror games and fighting games. I did agree on horror games until I actually played them on a handheld. Playing through SH1 on the PSP was oddly just as nervewracking as playing it on the big screen. SH Origins, while I felt it was bland, was pretty immersive in places and I got totally sucked in and creeped out by the world of Shattered Memories on PSP. If a horror game doesn't work on a handheld, it's the game, not the system.

If anything 3D may well add a whole other layer of immersion in there, in spite of the small screen.

And, as for fighters, Tekken DR works great on PSP. The Def Jam fighter was also a complete surprise treat for me on the same system. And the Neo Geo Pocket fighters are still fantastic. The games that don't work on handheld systems are just those that were made for systems well beyond the capabilities of the systems (too many buttons or, in the PSP's case, the handicap of the early godawful d-pad) and aren't optimised for the system.

http://i48.tinypic.com/23uv578.jpg

http://e3.nintendo.com/e3-presentation/index.html

Ohh wow, Zelda with full motion sensitive capability...that's like, new technology, man...phhhbbbttt!

That's what they should've done with Twilight Princess!

Geez... (-_-);

They certainly took long enough explaining it...not that complicated...

Still exciting, though!

Yeah, KoF:R2 and SNK vs Capcom: Match of the Millenium were top notch handheld fighters by any stretch. Unfortunately, outside of the Neo Geo Pocket...yeah, handheld fighters kinda blow chunks. Plus, I can't play on any pad to begin with (even the NGPC's stick-pad solution wasn't optimal, but is by far my favorite D-pad and made it easy to do stuff in the games).

Good move on Nintendo's part...Show some killer games and hype a new system with a lot of potential, while their competitors simply show how they're going to try to copy them and capture their piece of the casual market pie by offering overpriced peripherals. I think even Sony and Microsoft would have to agree they got skunked this E3 by Nintendo.

I know Sony and MS have been hauling around Move and Natal for a while now but the focus they gave to these did surprise me. It's exactly as you say - it looks like they are trying to eat into Nintendo's market and yet it would seem to me to make far more sense to narrow their focus and concentrate on the more gamer's games. Provide a clear distinction, strengthen their own market rather than risk diluting what the PS3 or 360 stand for. I'm guessing there is more of a risk of them losing their own market than capturing Nintendo's one.

Thats exactly what they are trying to do. Capture Nintendo's piece of pie. The thing is they really don't risk losing their current clientele. As many people who are in the game industry have said before its all about growth. All the people who are going to play games really already play them. Nintendo did something interesting by tapping a hidden demographic that has never been catered to. In this of course MS and Sony want to copy Nintendo. I actually just had the arguement with my brother whether or not they will actually usurp Nintendo this console generation. My answer? Of course not. I don't care how hard they try to push the hardware on people its still only going to hit a small amount of people. Who is going to support this new tech? Well you can't really dedicate an entire game to it because you want more than the people who actually own Move or Kinect to play. They have no installed base in which to work on. Look at Nintendo. That is their main schtick. The classic controls come second so they actually get some quality motion games. Where do MS and Sony screw up? No More Heroes HD. Wtf. They couldn't wait a little longer to use this game for Move or Kinect. They could have stole a Wii game, but they didn't.

Meanwhile while the Motion plus is hardly ideal for people, Nintendo's method of distribution will rule. Oh hey you guys you need it to play Zelda. Btw we have it bundled for a little extra. Enjoy. Thats like saying Halo Reach will require Kinect and actually will have a bundle for it. Take one of the most popular game franchises of all time and make it required. Genius.

In other 3DS news, there is a pic of what the game cards will look like floating around (similar to DS games, but with a notch on top to prevent them from fitting in older DS systems) and Reggie said that they haven't decided whether or not it will be region locked yet (I would bet on yes).  He also reiterated the previously announced release timeframe of "before the end of March 2011."  I'd guess that Nintendo would really like to release the hardware in time for xmas in north america but it isn't sure if it can get the stars to align for that, so it's waiting until it gets a clearer picture to announce the release.  As for price, I'd say there's no way they're selling this for less than $200, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them charge a bit more ($300 max).  This is "first in the world" tech, and I think they can get away "Apple style" with pricing it at a premium for the first 6-12 months.

I know Nintendo doesn't have a very clean track record when it comes to home consoles, but ALL of their portable consoles so far have been region free, and I really don't see why the 3DS would be any different.
In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of ANY region restricted portable consoles at all.

As for the price, $200 sounds about right.
I don't think they'll cross that, but it won't be considerably less either.

Well this handheld is getting parental controls...I wouldn't rule out Nintendo getting too controlling over ending region-free games. With these handheld games going up in production costs--don't region free games require time&money to contact and get approval from country rating boards--I can see certain money shortcuts being taken.

I'd estimate they won't sell it for more than $220. I think the Wii price will factor heavily into their decision as well (as in when will Wii receive another price cut).

The DSi was region coded. Normal DS games were fine but the (very few) DSi-specific carts were not compatible across regions and all DSi-Ware titles were region specific. Many are speculating that the 3DS will not be region free because the DSi seemed like the first step in that direction.

Reggie has now confirmed that the U.S. release of the 3DS won't be until next year, presumably still by the end of March, but who knows.  I'm kinda wondering if Nintendo will use a spring release to justify a premium price to profit from the early adopters and then lower the price come fall 2011 for the mass market.  Should be interesting.