The Nintendo 3Ds

[x68000]

Some of the rolling non playable demos shown at E3 have looked very impressive (MGS, SF IV) but there has to be doubts as to whether the 3DS can come close to what was seen once the games hit playable form (we'll see at the TGS).

If they can squeeze a port of Mario Galaxy out of the hardware i'll be happy

I'd rather a new, less gimmicky game in the vein of SM64. (So, not a port of SM64, but more like SM64 in Gameplay than Galaxy)

-God Ginrai

Barring the whole starbits thing, the games play pretty much identically IMO

They do seem keen to port old n64 games with slightly enhanced visuals though!

 

[DaveC]

Some of the rolling non playable demos shown at E3 have looked very impressive (MGS, SF IV) but there has to be doubts as to whether the 3DS can come close to what was seen once the games hit playable form (we'll see at the TGS).

If they can squeeze a port of Mario Galaxy out of the hardware i'll be happy

If they pump out a Zelda or Metroid then I am sold.

Ok even Tetris will look cool in 3D..

 

[Nova]

Some of the rolling non playable demos shown at E3 have looked very impressive (MGS, SF IV) but there has to be doubts as to whether the 3DS can come close to what was seen once the games hit playable form (we'll see at the TGS).

If they can squeeze a port of Mario Galaxy out of the hardware i'll be happy

If they pump out a Zelda or Metroid then I am sold.

Ok even Tetris will look cool in 3D..

THE BRICKS...THEY'RE COMING RIGHT AT ME!

 

[God Ginrai]

Some of the rolling non playable demos shown at E3 have looked very impressive (MGS, SF IV) but there has to be doubts as to whether the 3DS can come close to what was seen once the games hit playable form (we'll see at the TGS).

If they can squeeze a port of Mario Galaxy out of the hardware i'll be happy

I'd rather a new, less gimmicky game in the vein of SM64. (So, not a port of SM64, but more like SM64 in Gameplay than Galaxy)

-God Ginrai

Barring the whole starbits thing, the games play pretty much identically IMO

They do seem keen to port old n64 games with slightly enhanced visuals though!

The tiny spherical worlds thing is what bothered me. That, and the starbits. (Oh, and I thought that bumblebee mario was a deep stab in his masculinity)

Some of the rolling non playable demos shown at E3 have looked very impressive (MGS, SF IV) but there has to be doubts as to whether the 3DS can come close to what was seen once the games hit playable form (we'll see at the TGS).

If they can squeeze a port of Mario Galaxy out of the hardware i'll be happy

If they pump out a Zelda or Metroid then I am sold.

Ok even Tetris will look cool in 3D..

THE BRICKS...THEY'RE COMING RIGHT AT ME!

That's a bad Welltris clone. ;P

-God Ginrai

 

[Bosbeetle]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=398994

apparently the chip is known, i have no idea if its a good GPU you guys probably know

 

[Nintendo]

http://www.neogaf.co...ad.php?t=398994

apparently the chip is known, i have no idea if its a good GPU you guys probably know

Already mentioned several posts above.

 

[OrR]

That's a bad Welltris clone. ;P

-God Ginrai

Actually it's a completely different game and it came out in the same year (1989). I haven't played Welltris but from the descriptions I could find, BlockOut is probably much more fun. I loved playing it as a kid. B) We really need a 3DS version.

 

[gdsense]

I've translated short japanese article "Reason Why DMP's 3D IP Core PICA200 is Powering Nintendo 3DS ?" and put it on my blog.

Watch out for my broken English. h34r:

http://mycyclopedia.tistory.com/224

 

[migo]

That makes sense - straight up in line with what Nintendo would do.

 

[x68000]

Back on topic, heard on the ol' grapvine yesterday from a distributor that the Japanese 3DS launch is likely to be late October or early November with the price set just under Y20,000. If true, that would suggest a £229 uk retail and a $299 in the US.

xe.com says 20,000 Yen is about £150 and $221. In practice, USA prices are usually lower than Japanese prices by standard conversion rates. I think there's no way 3DS will cost $300, my bets are at $200 or less.

I'm guessing of course, but this is going to launch at a higher pricepount than any previous NDS. I doubt we'll get any concrete info on western pricing until the new year, especially with the frailty of the Yen.

Has the actual CPU been revealed or can we at least whittle down which ones it may be?

I know analysts can talk bs, but this concurs with what i've heard coming out of Japan

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=252861

 

[Exophase]

I know analysts can talk bs, but this concurs with what i've heard coming out of Japan

http://www.computera...e.php?id=252861

I've seen some figures, and they seem completely bogus to me. What you've heard coming out of Japan is 20,000, which corresponds more to $200 than $300, IMO.

 

[x68000]

I know analysts can talk bs, but this concurs with what i've heard coming out of Japan

http://www.computera...e.php?id=252861

I've seen some figures, and they seem completely bogus to me. What you've heard coming out of Japan is 20,000, which corresponds more to $200 than $300, IMO.

Talk is now rife about a limited quantity UK launch in early December. It'll probably end up being similar to the Wii fiasco of '06

 

[migo]

People are talking about there being 4 year old technology in the 3DS, I don't see why they'd do that and have price as a barrier to entry. Nintendo has never launched an expensive handheld or a handheld with poor battery life. Those are two things you can count on, as those are two of the main things that keep winning the handheld console wars for Nintendo.

 

[fischju2000]

The line supports ES1.1 and apparently a range of ES2.0-like features which are accessed directly hopefully greatly bumping up the efficiency of programs running on it. Hopefully they'll give a complete breakdown at TGS and we won't have to wait for an actual unit to get torn down.

I'm guessing it'll get hacked relatively quickly (6-10 months), there are nearly a dozen competitive hackers in the DS/Wii scene responsible for nearly all the breakthroughs, the homebrew scene on those devices has to be the largest of them all. It begs the question, how will eventual emulators like PSX handle on it? And compared to the Pandora? And with 3D display supporting graphic plugins...

 

[Exophase]

The line supports ES1.1 and apparently a range of ES2.0-like features which are accessed directly hopefully greatly bumping up the efficiency of programs running on it. Hopefully they'll give a complete breakdown at TGS and we won't have to wait for an actual unit to get torn down.

Not sure I'd call its features ES2-like, aside from programmable vertex processing, something most gaming platforms tend to have. Maybe they implement features that are like ones game authors might implement on ES 2 hardware, but to me going for more specialized fixed functionality is going in the opposite direction that ES2 has taken from ES1.1. It's kind of going further down a divergent path that the industry was briefly going towards before programmable pixel pipelines became standard (see GeForce 2's expanded pixel capabilities for reference)

I'm always a little envious of the direct access consoles usually have. If only IMG weren't so secretive with their chip interfaces..

I'm guessing it'll get hacked relatively quickly (6-10 months), there are nearly a dozen competitive hackers in the DS/Wii scene responsible for nearly all the breakthroughs, the homebrew scene on those devices has to be the largest of them all. It begs the question, how will eventual emulators like PSX handle on it? And compared to the Pandora? And with 3D display supporting graphic plugins...

Sadly Nintendo is pretty serious about cranking up the DRM this time.. guess we'll have to see how hard things get hit. DSi hasn't been cracked yet (afaik), but I don't think people really care as much there.

Save for some crazy magic you're probably not going to see parallax in PS1 games, since the GPU has no depth information. Same reason you don't see perspective correction. N64 could have something like this, especially with how HLEd it is.

But, I'm not sure 3DS will be powerful enough for solid N64 emulation. My bets right now are still on ~500MHz ARM11 + VFP. Nintendo is so stingy with specs these days that I'm not sure we'll even learn about the CPU any time soon.

 

[hosant]

Not sure I'd call its features ES2-like, aside from programmable vertex processing, something most gaming platforms tend to have. Maybe they implement features that are like ones game authors might implement on ES 2 hardware, but to me going for more specialized fixed functionality is going in the opposite direction that ES2 has taken from ES1.1. It's kind of going further down a divergent paththat the industry was briefly going towards before programmable pixel pipelines became standard (see GeForce 2's expanded pixel capabilities for reference)

Well, in the matter of ES2-like, you are looking at it from an architecure point of view while the other poster looks it as application point of view. Of course this isn't Opengl ES 2.0, but is trying to give comparable functionality. Still lacks important stuff like MSAA, but if this aproach manages better battery life, its game for Nintendo... and many end users too .

But I totally understand if the homebrew enthusiast community prefers something like PowerVR SGX, since is practically a PC GPU.

About the CPU, I'm presonally more concerned about the RAM. 128MB at least so it can have modern handheld functionality.

 

[Orkie]

I thought people had code running in DSi mode months ago?

 

[fischju2000]

Maciek hasn't said anything about his project in quite a while, we really could use his direct open source driver...

The DSi has a couple exploits, http://dsibrew.org/wiki/DSi_exploits - but I don't think people are that interested in it. They aren't exactly flashcart-friendly.

If they really wanted to kill hacks, they'd force system updates unlike what the Wii does. And they could, which is scary... Good luck to the teams, I might even have to get back into the scene to watch it all fold out.

With the DSi's multimedia capability and the talk of Hollywood 3D movies on the 3DS, hopefully it'll have at LEAST an open .mp4/h264 player for video. And a great custom version of Opera, possibly with flash. But the most interesting thing, at least for me, will be seeing what the 3DSWare (?) allows indie devs to do with that 3D screen. Some of the most creative Wii titles are on Wiiware, those same indie devs and a 3D Screen to experiment with will be amazing. And how easily they give out the SDK could greatly help the other-side...

500mhz ARM11 sounds right, but if they want those 3D films to play well it would take serious optimization. The GPU likely isn't even at 200mhz. A well-priced Virtual Console with hand-ported N64 games would still be greatly welcome.

TGS, TGS, TGS. (Or Nintendo's own show) [Only two months!]

 

[Exophase]

If there'll really be h.264 level stuff it'll probably be delivered with dedicated hardware acceleration blocks like most other media handhelds these days, not with heavy CPU routines.

 

[hosant]

Nintendo never attends to TGS , at best you can expect some trhid party games to be there.