Loved the 3DS announcement. viral marketers scrambling to protect the massive push towards getting everyone to buy new 3DTV’s with dorky glasses from a cheap handheld doing the same thing without the glasses, at once undercutting the price massively and making the glasses-required 3D look outdated.
Over the span of a few hours the message went from “it’s not really 3D” to “you’ll have to cross your eyes like Magic Eye” to “it’ll just use the camera to trick you into thinking it’s 3D” to “this will just make 3DTV more accepted more quickly” then finally to random outright fabricated stuff like “the graphics won’t even be any better” and my personal favorite, “the cart sizes will be too small”.
Personally my initial reaction was more “sounds pretty cool….what else is there to it?” and immediately thought about what kind of new gameplay integration/interface they’d be putting in. Your comparison to the initial DS reveal strategy seems pretty spot on, imo – we’ll see Sony show off PSP2 with 3D and multi-touch or something and then a few hours later Nintendo will show off something crazy (someone dug up a weird patent on a force-feedback stylus that would vibrate at the edges of the 3d projected object much like the Wii remote does when pointing at a button, could have potential I guess).
Anyway I figured you’d be getting the same kind of amusement watching the industry grunts running around like crazy just because Nintendo posted a three paragraph PDF to their website!
It amazes me how many people cannot see what is going on. It is clear to me, it is clear to you, but other people just cannot see it. We know the viral marketers see it for what it is (as well as Sony).
Since the Wii, there have been many myths made about Nintendo. Most people don’t even bother looking at the business side of the company but just wrap it up into a little phrase. For example, one constant refrain is “Nintendo loves making money.” And what company doesn’t? All those Scrooge McDuck jokes only ended up puffing up the myth. Nintendo has billions of dollars in a warchest. They aren’t hurting financially.
So when something happens where the DS successor is announced prior to the DS XL even launching, people become perplexed. Why would Nintendo sabotage their money making potential? It is perplexing only because people believe Nintendo is guided only by money making potential. If Nintendo has a choice of further destroying a competitor at the cost of harming a new handheld hardware iteration, Nintendo will do the former. It is in the long term interest to do so.
Much of the ‘Industry’ cheering the 3DS only does so because they think Nintendo is jumping onto the ‘3d movement’ bandwagon. These people are going to be disappointed. I expect Nintendo to use the 3DS to target the low end. All these ‘3d movement’ bandwagon people are obsessed about the high end. In other words, the 3DS is not going to be about Gamecube type games. It is going to be more low end stuff as has occurred with the DS and Wii.
It is fun to watch Sony making gaffes and analysts being confused. It reminds me of prior to the Wii and DS being launched. Good times…