Nintendo’s New 3DS, announced today, has a number of upgrades aimed at hardcore gamers. Nintendo
Nintendo’s got a brand new 3DS, one that’s aimed at capturing more of the hardcore gamer market.
Announced today for an October 11 release in Japan, the New Nintendo 3DS (that’s its name) has a variety of upgrades that all seem to be aimed squarely at gamers that demand high-end experiences. It now has a second analog joystick, making camera controls in complex games like Monster Hunter significantly easier. Going along with that are two extra “shoulder buttons” on the back of the unit for more control options. The 3-D screen and camera have been given upgrades.
And most significantly, New Nintendo 3DS has more under the hood. The internals have been upgraded for flashier graphics and faster internet speeds. Nintendo being Nintendo, it hasn’t said how much of a boost New 3DS will get. But it has said that the new model will actually play some exclusive games that wouldn’t be possible on the current 3DS.
The smaller version of New Nintendo 3DS. Nintendo
The first of these will be Xenoblade Chronicles, a version of the role-playing game that Nintendo released a few years back on its original Wii console. This is about as nerdy and hardcore-focused a piece of content as one could imagine: Nintendo launching a new platform with a 40-hour RPG? Who’d have imagined this in the days of Wii Sports?
Nintendo will release the New Nintendo 3DS in two models, roughly equivalent in size to the original 3DS and to the scaled-up 3DS XL model. They will retail for 18,800 yen and 16,000 yen respectively (about $180 and $160).
Other new features on both models include built-in support for near-field communication devices like Nintendo’s upcoming Amiibo interactive figures, more battery life and Micro SD card support.
Retreating Upmarket
Nintendo’s announcement of an upgraded portable machine designed to appeal to more discriminating, dedicated gamers comes hot on the heels of new comments by the company’s game design guru Shigeru Miyamoto that seemed to signal just this sort of shift.
Nintendo, he said to Edge magazine, no longer wants to chase after “the sort of people who, for example, might want to watch a movie. They might want to go to Disneyland.”
“Their attitude is, ‘okay, I am the customer. You are supposed to entertain me,’” Miyamoto said according to the report. “It’s kind of a passive attitude they’re taking, and to me it’s kind of a pathetic thing. They do not know how interesting it is if you move one step further and try to challenge yourself [with more advanced games].”
“Abandoning the lower-performance segments of an industry and moving upmarket is 100% predictable in disruption theory,” game design consultant Ben Cousins wrote on Twitter this week in response. “Was Miyamoto saying casual gamers were pathetic when the Nintendo stock was at $76?”
Advocates of disruption theory in books like The Innovator’s Dilemma—that’s one of the biz-school tomes that Nintendo name-checked when it launched the revolutionary Wii and DS hardware—would say that Nintendo is “retreating upmarket.”
Losing the “expanded audience” that it once courted to great effect with simplified gaming platforms—whether to mobile phone games or Disneyland—Nintendo is now, at least in the short term, pursuing the high-end consumer with products more geared to their needs. That’s more buttons, more joystick, more RPGs and more oomph.
You might notice that this is not a good long-term strategy, and indeed might be setting Nintendo up for death by a thousand cuts. That’s why Nintendo’s also working on its Quality of Life health-related gaming platform initiative, which might actually be able to capture a brand new audience again.
‘Til then, it’s “What, you want buttons? Here’s all the buttons.”
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