The 2DS ISN’T Bad for Developers – A Counter-Argument
I’m sorry my dear Michael O’Connell-Davidson, but I simply don’t agree with your rather blunt assassination of the 2DS that you posted yesterday. Nintendo haven’t lost confidence in the 3DS, they’ve simply realised that the scaremongering of media outlets back at the machine’s launch has snookered them.
Now, as we go into the launch of the almighty Pokémon and the machine’s third Christmas, it appears that the venomous bite of The Sun and other negative Nellies – with their articles about the 3DS melting eyes and burning brains – continues to wreck havoc with public perception.
I’ve been speaking with a lot of parents recently you see – because work permitted it, not because I stalk adults that seem interested in Nintendo products – and the vast majority of them consider the 3DS to have an age limit, ignorant to the fact that you can turn the supposedly fiendish 3D effect off. If little Timmy isn’t 7, then he can’t own one, that’s just the way it is in the mind of the average British mum. For some, and this is a legitimate quote, it’s a case of ‘he’s got a tablet because he’s too young for a Nintendo’. That’s bad PR.
Couple this with the child’s tendency to break the DS/3DS’ hinge (that clamshell design is not as safe as you’d think) and that sums up the 2DS’ core design double whammy. It’ll play the new Pokémon game with no fictional age limit, and there’s no floppy hinge to destroy. The 2DS is just a big slab-o-game machine that is cheaper than the current model (it comes with a charger, too!) and that’ll likely be more resilient to child fondling than any prior model of the DS.
What’s more, big shoulder buttons. A large amount of young children find it surprisingly hard to comprehend that there are two dinky buttons hiding behind the top screen of an open DS. The 2DS makes ’em big and puts them in an obvious place.
So that’s my argument for the existence of the 2DS speaking purely with my market research head on, now let’s talk about its removal of 3D as this was the thrust of the original article. I have to say that I can’t get behind the argument that removing 3D from the 3DS screen is akin to removing the Wii-mote from the Wii, or the Gamepad from the Wii U, at all. It’s relative in so far as it’s the main marketed USP, but it’s simply not as relevant to the pure act of play as the other elements in the comparison.
Heck, the vast majority of 3DS players I know (and believe me, I know a lot of them) play the blummin’ machine in 2D anyway! I mean, I love 3D, Kid Icarus is blummin’ gorgeous with it whacked up to full, but at no point (aside, maybe, from Mario 3D Land as you say, but those sections offered a camera tilt for players that ignored 3D) have I found it an essential factor to a game’s playability. In fact it’s been a negative factor in some cases such as Dead or Alive: Dimensions. Sure, making your game look like a little diorama is nice, but 3D graphics are not the same as a bona fide control option. Releasing a DS without the touch screen, that would marry up to your analogy.
What’s more, developers have had to consider 2D players ever since day one. What if someone played with the machine locked in 2D? What if they didn’t like 3D? What if they couldn’t see 3D? The effect has never been an ‘always on’ thing, it’s been an option since day one. Again, with the Wii you’re locked in to using the Wii remote, every machine comes with one as its primary control set up, but the 3DS has always offered the choice to be a 2D machine out of the box, and has thus presented developers with these issues since day one, it’s nothing new.
The 2DS still connects to the Internet. It still StreetPasses. It still plays all those old DS games. It still connects to the eShop. Aside from not being able to play in 3D, which was an option on the existing model already, the 2DS doesn’t strip away any meaningful gameplay features. PSP Street this ain’t.
And do Nintendo care about third parties? Well, that’s a much trickier question, though I’d say that it’s Ninty’s insular Japanese focus that’s doing them more damage than releasing a 2D-only variant of their current handheld. The 3DS is currently Nintendo’s front runner, but we also know that handhelds are less desireable in terms of market share outside of Japan and this leads to a dichotomy; developers outside of the Big N’s homeland see handheld gaming as an underpowered bubble in the market when they could be developing power houses of console entertainment, it’s been this way for years. If anything the 2DS should bring more attention the platform, as it could present a serious boost to sales. Sell systems and the developers will come (theoretically).
That said I’m still playing Etrian Odyssey, and am very much looking forward to Bravely Default, Shantae: Pirate’s Curse, Shin Megami Tensei IV, Batman, Sonic and whatever else appears on the eShop in the meantime. Third Party support on the system isn’t as dead as you seem to believe.
I honestly think you’re blowing this machine’s impact on the current situation completely, and unnecessarily, out of proportion. The 2DS does not ‘fracture the userbase’ any more than the SP did when it and the GBA were available side by side, and the 2DS’ precense in the market is unlikely to affect developer’s concerns in any grand negative way. Oh and I say this as a Monster Hunter player with no need for a circle pad pro, too, so don’t you try telling me that that thing is essential, because it isn’t. Speaking of which, if the 2DS had an extra stick as standard then the claims of user base fragmentation would ring true because that would be a baseline control addition. That would be stupid.
When you really analyse the market, the 2DS is a surprisingly smart move as an alternative system. Nintendo needs those under 7’s back in its projections, and this is the machine that re-opens that market that Nintendo so haphazardly lost to poor publicity. If the machine is priced just right, then Nintendo may have got their brand back on the fast tracks.
- Dragon’s Crown Review (PS3) - October 11, 2013
- Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning Review (3DS) - September 20, 2013
- The 2DS ISN’T Bad for Developers – A Counter-Argument - September 6, 2013
