Iwata has been talking a lot about the 3DS lately, revealing quite a few interesting details. These include connectivity with the Wii, although that specific one he’s been pretty vague about, pricing, specs and anti piracy. It would seem that the 3DS will require more charging than the original DS (No surprise there) but from what Iwata implies it also seems that the price of the console and the software for it will be pretty much the same as well. So expect he 3DS to cost around the same as the original DS when it came out.

Lastly, Iwata talked about the lost business cards, which disappeared in transit and contain contact information of the 1200 attendees of Nintendo’s 2010 Conference.

  • On 3DS connectivity to Wii…
    • “We believe that, naturally, instant communication between the 3DS and a console in your home will become one topic in the future, but today I cannot talk about specifics regarding the kinds of things you can do in terms of connectivity between a 3DS and console.”
    • Nintendo is always eagerly pursuing the idea of fun arising from always carrying your game system with you
    • “We’ll surely be thinking about connectivity with consoles as well.”
  • On 3DS game pricing…
    • “We don’t believe that the world is in a state where high priced software will sell well, so we don’t believe it will be in a price range too far off from current DS software.”
    • Expectations of a very dynamic range of software, with prices ranging from quite low to premium
  • On specs of the 3DS…
    • Internal NAND flash memory, used mainly for system purposes
    • Games boot directly from SD cards, rather than loading to the 3DS, much like they do on Wii
    • Expect the 3DS to be charged more frequently than the current DS systems
    • Cradle included with the system
    • Nintendo made the system high-spec because they wanted third parties to have the power to work with it
    • Nintendo didn’t want third parties saying “Because of the specs, we can’t make our game on the Nintendo machine.”
    • Powerful hardware was also needed to deal with the system’s 3D visuals.
    • Nintendo’s developers felt such things as “Tag Mode is interesting, but with the DS, this is the limit.”
    • Nintendo wanted to allow people to temporarily pause DS games so that they could access other areas of the system, but this proved too difficult with the DS’s specs
    • powerful hardware was needed for the Augmented Reality technology as well
  • On date and price…
    • Nintendo originally felt that a release within the year would be preferred
    • “We progressed with actual development, and we’re currently getting ready for mass production, but we determined that it would be difficult to ready suitable numbers for a release within the year. Additionally, regarding the level of polish for the product, we thought that by setting the release date to what was announced today we’d be able to deliver it at levels that we found satisfactory.”
    • “We decided that it would be preferred to simultaneously deliver a highly polished product and to ready satisfactory quantities in order to not cause confusion in the market. It is true that this caused negative effects on this year’s earnings forecasts.”
    • Nintendo does not feel it appropriate to make comparisons to Wii price
    • “The price ratio between consoles and portables has been x until now, so it should remain the same for 3DS.”
    • “Of course, the lower the price the better. However, considering a number of factors such as materials cost, the health of the platform business, and the reaction post E3 as to how much value would be felt from the hardware once the functionality was understood, we felt that this price would be understood.”
  • On lost business cards…
    • 1,200 business cards Nintendo took at the reception area were lost while in transit to its home office
    • Nintendo formally apologized to all those that dropped off cards
    • Nintendo was not required to let people know this happened, but wanted to be up front about the situation
  • On 3DS piracy…
    • Automated firmware update system for 3DS
    • “As part of the functionality of SpotPass, we’re looking into having automatic system updates via the internet.”
    • These updates are also for getting new functionality onto 3DS systems
    • 3DS will also have a system in place for updating the firmware through package software itself
    • “We believed this to be doable because the usable ROM size for the 3DS would become much larger.”
    • Both types of firmware updates, piracy prevention is secondary to offering new functionality to owners

[Source: GoNintendo]

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