Was Nintendo pressured into revealing the 3DS early?
By Tim Stevens 
posted April 1st 2010 7:22AM
posted April 1st 2010 7:22AM
posted April 1st 2010 7:22AM
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YUP !! they had a nunchuck pointed at their heads
@ChillyCat
You guys do know that this was an aprils fools joke, right?
@ChillyCat And we don't want another wiimote-in-head accident, do we?
@ChillyCat
looks like they got a *facepalm* from the press.
The timing was unfortunate, but who among the Engadget readership really intended to buy one for themselves? The DSi XL is DSi for old people or very young kids. The target audience for this one, doesn't read Engadget.
@Titanium Man I don't own a DS. While I didn't intend to buy an XL for myself, I am interested in the 3D, the fact that it'll be backwards compatible makes it a little appealing for me to get into the ecosystem. So, I might have a spontaneous purchase in me the first time I check it out.
27 male with 20/20 vision. I bought a DSi XL for myself even after hearing about the 3DS. I wanted the big screen.
The 3DS will likely not be as big as the DSi XL and if the GBA and DS are any indicator, the backwards compatibility will probably result in a stretched or letterboxed screen. I'd rather have a good DS to play my DS games on, and the DSi XL is the best of the best.
@Elranzer
I don't argue. You and other Nintendo fans (me included) won't really be affected by the 3ds anouncement. I don't think the dsi xl is such a huge product for Nintendo. It's just a minor update. The 3ds sounds like the next big thing for them in the portable space.
@Titanium Man
I love my DSi XL. My DSL was getting long in the tooth (spotty touchscreen performance) and I just like the big screen. Contra 4 looks amazing on it!
Nintendo doesn't care about DSiXL. They have attained profit target a long time ago with the DS and DSi. This DSiXL is just a stop gap until the 3DS. Or in case you did care and buy one then you'd be tempted to buy the next gen portable that is backwards compatible with the DSiXL's software library you may happen to amass in the transition period. Everyone's a marketing genius except Palm.
yeah kinda killed the DSi XL with news of the 3D DSi
Do'h
Roll on E3!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I read this story like, last week....anyway.
I still don't understand how an official announcement would have been better than a "leak". So they officially announced it to prevent a leak??
That's like Apple officially announcing the iPhone HD now because its specs were leaked. I'm still not buying the reason behind Nintendo doing that.
The reason they announced it before it got leaked is so that it didn't get hyped out of proportion. Like how everyone was promising that the iPad would be super duper awesome and come with teleporting Pokémon-Unicorn hybrids, and when it got announced everyone was pissed off because it didn't reach their expectations. But if Nintendo announced it before it got leaked, then people couldn't get all annoyed because it didn't have any expectations to live up to, and therefore boycotting all of the pissed off geeks [read: us].
@Professor Hubert J Farnsworth
Just to remark on something you said.
People didn't expect the iPad to turn sand into gold. They were merely expecting it to run a tablet-optimized version of Mac OS, multitask, and have video-call capability.... and the absence of full-fidelity flash browsing wasn't even thinkable.
@Professor Hubert J Farnsworth
And, on the other hand.
Nobody -in their wildest dreams- expected the next DS to boast glasses-free 3D. See the difference between the two announcements?
@TareG
Yes, I do see your point, but I was over exaggerating to make mine. I know people didn't expect the iPad to turn sand into gold (and I don't mean to turn the topic onto anything Apple related - I was just using the iPad as an example) I used it as an example simply because rumours can get out of hand, like how in the iPad, one day it had a nine inch OLED screen, the next it had a seven inch e-ink screen. And that is the reason I think Nintendo announced the 3DS so early, so people don't get annoyed at them because the final product was different to what they expected.
@WP7S
Well it says ''Via Joystiq'' just below the article above the source link.
there were men armed with various plastic wii accessories hanging around miyamoto's each night.
i think somebody threw a wiifit with a threatening note attached to it through his window, too.
Oh no! DSi = GB Micro!
@stridermt2k I was more looking at it being akin to the Game Boy Color. Except with stuff we can download.
Doesn't make much sense... they could have easily said either "no comment" on the rumors, or simply denied them. That's what companies do when they are not ready to announce something.
Heck, look at the car industry - there can be leaked spyshots of an upcoming model, but until the carmaker themselves is ready to announce the new car, they simply don't talk about any car in development.
Yeah this was mentioned in the Engadget podcast last week... things getting a bit slack over easter I guess :)
No, the announcement won't kill DSi XL at all, IMO. I mean, OK: it will be obsolete in about a year. ¿So what?.
Think about the iPhone: by that same logic, every single iteration was already obsolete on release day, since you could actually tell that, in another 12 months, a better version was to be released. I don't see how that certainty has killed iPhone sales. ¿do you?.
Normal non-geek people (the kind the XL is marketed to, anyway) don't care about yet-to-be-released devices. They just walk in the store, see something they like, and buy it. And hey, they will see the XL, like the bigger screen, and buy it. And a year from now, they may still be using it not even knowing a "new thing" has been released.
@Hamaki
Well the problem with your iPhone comparison is that you know there will be a new iteration every year. A consumer can't decide not to buy one because there will be a new once next year, usually with enough of a spec bump to be a worthwhile investment over an older model. They'll be putting it off indefinitely if that's the case.
@Brother Unit No 4 but then there are like 10 android devices coming out each year.
@Brother Unit No 4
Yeah, but the thing is they aren't putting it off, ¿aren't they?
I mean, C'mon, even the average consumer "knows" there's going to be an iPhone 4G sooner rather than later ¿right?. Well ¿is that killing iPhone 3GS's sales?. no, it isn't. It's still selling like cookies, As it happened with the 3G and the 2G before.
But that's not my point really. Take a look at the history of the DS. The orginal DS sold in the millions, then the DS Lite came out. It was just a redesign with hardly any novelty or new feature. Again, sold in the millions. Then the DSi. Pretty much identical to the DS Lite, just with a crappy camera. Sold in the millions -it even lost GBA compatibility... nah, whatever-.
DS consumers have been buying version after version of the thing, no matter what. And this XL thing has something actually NEW. So no, I don't think the 3DS announcment will kill the thing. I believe the XL will sell in the millions....again. And when the 3DS is released, well...guess what's going to happen.
Hey, ¿remember when everyone said the DSi was going to fail because there was no reason to get one if you already had a DS, and people who didn't would choose to wait for the next thing instead?. Yeah, right.
Billy Pigeon is the best name ever...
Its Really not all that strange. I mean the did the exact same thing when the Released the Original DS. They released the GBA-MICRO immediately before that. Much like the micro was, the DSI XL is bith a place holder and i believe a sort of test product to see which screen size people prefer and find more palateable for when they finally release the 3DS. As its rumored to have larger (but not quite as large) screens as well.
It's like I was telling a friend who was all, 'Nintendo is retarded as hell for revealing the 3DS when they did."
The simple matter is that Nintendo is easily the most secretive company in the industry, and NOTHING gets out from them until they want it to. How many speculations were there on what Nintendo's "Revolution" system would offer with its controller, and how many of them were right in the end?
@ModernTenshi04
They are so good at keeping secrets because in Japan, you won't just get fired if you leak company secrets. They'll kill you.
Hahaha
@ModernTenshi04
If by "Industry" you mean Consumer Electronics, the most secretive company of the industry is, by a long distance, Apple.
With Nintendo, you at least get a project codename two years in advance. Heck, they'll even show you some Tech demos (as they did with Project Reality). No way Steve would ever let that happen in Cuppertino
Are we ready for a boost in hardware finally Nintendo? I wouldn't mind getting a whole new system, not a DS. Maybe a new Gameboy, give it just one big screen or use the two but boarderless so they can touch and then throw in your 3D bullshit or whatever. I'm just getting kinda bored of the DS design. I have a DSi, I want my next Nintendo handheld to be different.
@WP7S
I recognize that wall.. 2pro?
i wouldnt say that people who read engadget don't care about the XL.. I originally wasn't going to get one until a guy i work with got one and I could actually see the size difference.. the pictures IMO don't do it justice its a HUGE impact.. my eyes don't get tired from extended gameplay on this device.. the pixelation impact is minor and for the most part unnoticable. with gamestop giving a good upgrade discount it was well worth the upgrade
I was close to getting the DSi XL until this announcement came out. Looks like I'll just wait a little longer.
no one cares about nintendo anymore forget them
I dunno. The 3DS is still a good year, year and a half away. the shoulder buttons on my lite are going out and it almost never left the house anyway.
i just might get an XL
yeah.. Nintendo "pressured" sure!! that is a good one..