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Comment by dpcan | Hacker News Reader

My Kids have DS's. But for Christmas, I bought each of them and my wife an iPod touch.

The concept was simple, I spend about $70 more per device, but instead of buying $500 worth of games over the next 2 years, I will probably spend $50. Why buy $35 DS games when the kids are happy with free and $2 iOS games?

Also, Nintendo should have been smarter than to bet on 3D. The theaters can do it to up-charge us for a minimally better experience, but most people could care less if 3D just went away. The fact that Nintendo bought into "3D is the future" feels very 1985 to me.

The DS and DSi are so good, and the kids love them so much, my personal opinion is simply to move in the direction handhelds have been moving already - better graphics and faster processors. The next step is to lower the prices of their games, but I don't see that happening.

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re: 3D movies. Signs are starting to show that movie goers are not merely indifferent to 3D but are starting to avoid it when given the 2D option [1]. Definitely not a good sign for Nintendo's bet on 3D technology. Brings to mind how many reviewers of the Zelda Ocarina of Time 3DS version talked about switching off the 3D features since they added nothing to, if not detracted from, the overall experience.

[1]http://www.economist.com/node/18988914?story_id=18988914

I couldn't agree more, Plants vs. Zombies is one of my most played games of late. I paid something like £1.19 for it on the App Store. It's £15 to £25 on the DS. The iOS version is infinitely better since it can get upgraded OTA and I can play it on a much larger screen (iPad).

Re: 3D, it's way beyond Nintendo...

It does seem many seemingly sane companies are going off the deep end here. What's with 3D? No one I know cares for or buys this crap (at least knowingly, one happened to buy a 3D-capable HDTV, but he's never attested to using it for that purpose)

Y'know what it reminds me of? The "Virtual Reality" craze of the early 90s. Everybody went on about how awesome it was that in a few years time, once the graphics hardware caught up, we'd all be putting on virtual reality helmets, not just for games, but for everything. "Man", people said after playing Dactyl Nightmare for the first time, "when the graphics get better, and we figure out how to make small, light screens, this is going to be awesome!"

What happened? Well, the graphics caught up, and we figured out how to make small, light screens, but we also figured out that wearing a virtual reality helmet is annoying, gives you a headache, and really doesn't give you any more feeling of immersion than just watching a big flat screen.

Exactly, which is why I made the 1985 remark. It feels like the helmets all over again. Why not have Max Headroom do an ad for the 3DS and we're all good.

Some people like 3D-capable LCDs because they can play FPS games better at 120Hz-- but they don't bother using it for actual 3D.

Interesting approach. I imagine an iTunes/AppStore allowance would be easier to manage as well.

I buy the kids $20 gift cards for their birthdays now and they end up buying 10-15 games.

Having wifi capable DS with ability to purchase games via some NintendoApp Store would significantly reduce games cost, since physical cartridge, box and game manuals are no longer required.

In theory, but I bet Nintendo is infinitely more militant about their approval process for their version of the App Store than Apple ever could be (not to mention their revenue sharing and pricing policy per app).

And, knowing them, it'll be the same stale list of 1st party Mario games, Tetris, bad EA ports, and flash or iPhone powerhouse game du jour all for the low, low price of $15 a game, a savings of $10 over cartridges. Break out the noisemakers, what a savings!

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