Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 17 Comments

Now that the 3DS has been officially unveiled and the first round of specs were released by Nintendo, other companies are sharing additional information about the system. DMP has announced the system will be using the PICA200 GPU chip. There’s only a press release in Japanese for now, though you can read about the GPU’s abilities below.

“The PICA200 scales with up to four pipelines and processes from up to four programmable vertex units. The 3D core, using their proprietary graphics technology named MAESTRO-2G, the second generation of the Maestro design, implements custom graphics algorithms as hardware for enabling a set of shading features that include per-vertex sub-surface scattering, bidirectional reflectance distribution function, cook-torrance, polygon subdivision, and soft shadowing. Their image post-processing module, the PICA-FBM frame buffer management, can polish the image with anti-aliasing and a set of other 2D functions and can actually be licensed independently as a core for 2D-only devices. In either case, the PICA-FBM can be extended with a PICA-VG vector graphics module.”

Source 1, Source 2

Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 4 Comments

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The 3DS has received a ton of positive press since it was officially revealed this past Tuesday. You might be curious to hear what one of the industry’s most prominent developers has to say, though. Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski offered his thoughts about the system before showing off his newest game on GameTrailers.

“I was almost late because I was over checking out the 3DS actually. It’s actually really good. It’s the kind of 3D I want. I don’t want to wear glasses.”

Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, DS, News, Videos, Wii | 9 Comments

Source

Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii | 0 comments

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“Based off internally conducted research, naked-eye 3D for portables does not have high precision, and at present there are limitations.” – Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai

Although I’ll admit that the 3DS’ technology has issues like a narrow viewing angle, based on the feedback from E3, I’d say the good outweighs the bad. Not only can you take your 3D gaming experiences anywhere you go, but you also don’t to hassle with 3D glasses.

Source

Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 8 Comments

Update: According to analyst Michael Pachter, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told him that it costs “a lot more” to make a 3DS than a DSi and that Nintendo doesn’t intend to lose money on the hardware.

There were two pieces of information Nintendo failed to mention about the 3DS at E3: A date and price. It’ll probably be a few months before we hear about either of those two details, but Nintendo president Satoru Iwata provided a hint regarding how much the handheld will cost. Because of the system’s graphical enhancements over the DS, new camera, features, and improvement in overall technology, it seems logical to assume that the 3DS will be priced more heavily than past Nintendo portables. According to Iwata, it’ll cost more than the current DS, which probably means it’ll set consumers back at least $200.

“I have to refrain from talking specifically about the price point. What I can confirm is that, in terms of the production costs, it will cost more than the costs for the Nintendo DS today. Having said that, we believe we will produce enough value worthy of the production cost. We do not think we have to sell the products below cost.”

Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, DS, News, Wii | 2 Comments

Iwata on the origins of the 3DS…

“3D is nothing new for Nintendo. We’ve been working on the challenges for a number of years. As you know, about 15 years ago, we tried 3D with the Virtual Boy handheld. It didn’t work that well.

About ten years ago, when we were launching the Nintendo GameCube console, 3D technology was already available in the form of parallax barrier. We experimented to see what would happen if a LCD display could do 3D using the processing power of the GameCube. The GameCube had the ability to show images from the left eye and the right eye, shifted so that they could produce a 3D effect. The circuitry had been designed with the possibility of using a parallax barrier LCD. We experimented with Luigi’s Mansion, a launch title for the GameCube, to see if it would work. And the result was appealing. It showed depth in the view of the gaming world. But when we reviewed its marketability, we had to consider the problem of consumers having to purchase displays. Game hardware was already one purchase. And the TVs were not cheap at that time. So we thought it would not be practical.

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Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 11 Comments

Mega Man 2
Castlevania
Urban Champion
Kid Icarus
Yoshi’s Island
Smash Ping Pong
Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros.
Tennis
The Legend of Zelda
Metroid
Mystery of Murasame Castle

The games above were included as part of a sizzle reel of old-school titles at E3, hinting that they would be coming over to the 3DS. I’m not sure why it took so long to find out about this (and why Nintendo hasn’t shared a video of this as well as other 3DS trailers), but that’s besides the point!

In any case, Reggie has confirmed that the games will be brought over to the system. The thing is, they might be more than just simple ports. You may remember that Shigeru Miyamoto stated that with the Ocarina of Time remake, the developers are looking to take advantage of the 3DS’ features and 3D effect. So it’s possible that the classic games listed above may receive similar treatment.

Naturally, one of the first things you might think of when hearing about this is that Nintendo might be planning some sort of 3DS Virtual Console/3DS service. That seems likely based on the Japanese trademarks discovered several weeks ago, but we’ll have on that until Nintendo provides an official announcement.

Source

Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, Videos | 0 comments