Nintendo Goes Stereoscopic 3D with Launch of Nintendo 3DS Portable
The leading portable game maker is taking on Sony PSP and Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad with a new 3D portable gaming device
Nintendo of Japan has surprised the videogame industry by announcing a brand new portable gaming device, the Nintendo 3DS (working title), which will allow gamers to play stereoscopic 3D games without wearing 3D glasses. The new gaming system will debut at the E3 show in Los Angeles June 15th and will ship in Japan during Nintendo’s next fiscal year, which ends March 2011.
Unlike the new Nintendo DSi XL portable, which ships in the U.S. on March 28th for $190, the Nintendo 3DS is a brand new line of hardware. Nintendo said the 3DS will succeed the current DS platform of game devices, which has been Nintendo’s most successful platform to date. To capitalize on the 127 million DS hardware units sold worldwide, the new 3DS will be backwards-compatible with all DS games.
While Nintendo is the clear market leader over Sony, which has a global installed base of 57 million PSPs; Apple is throwing a one-two-three punch at the game giant with its iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (which ships April 3rd). The 3D aspect of the new Nintendo handheld will allow the company to capitalize on the wave of 3D mania spurred by James Cameron’s Avatar and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. It also will offer a differentiating factor for gamers, especially younger gamers who are growing up with 3D movies now.
Sony will be the first to jump into the 3D gaming space this summer with the free firmware upgrade of PlayStation 3. Sony games, including Gran Turismo 5, will play in 3D on any 3D TV. PS3 will also play the new Blu-ray 3D movies debuting this summer.
Nintendo Wii has seen a few 3D videogames from Disney Interactive Studios like last year’s G-Force and Toy Story Midway Mania, but those games used the old-fashioned Anaglyph cardboard glasses rather than the new stereoscopic glasses currently used in theaters and with PS3 3D. For Nintendo 3DS, the company will introduce technology that does not require glasses.
At CES this past January, multiple companies were showing 3D TVs that did not require any glasses. Many experts believe this type of technology will ultimately drive the 3D experience into the mainstream, beginning with videogames.
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About the Author
John Gaudiosi
Editor-in-Chief
John Gaudiosi has been covering videogames for the past 17 years for outlets like The Washington Post, CNET, Wired Magazine and CBS.com. He has focused on the convergence of entertainment and videogames for outlets like Video Business, Home Media Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Gamerlive.TV and is also a freelance game columnist for Reuters and writes for outlets like Playboy Magazine, NVISION Magazine, GamePro Magazine, Official PlayStation Magazine, EGM Now, Maxim.com, AOL GameDaily.com, GeForce.com, and Yahoo! Games. John also serves as the video game expert for NBC in Washington D.C. John was named one of the Top 50 Game Journalists in the world by Next-Gen.biz in 2007. He is the co-author of Scholastic Books' How to Get into Videogames, Prima Publishing's Madden: Twenty Years of Videogame Football and Electronic Arts: The Official History.
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