3D Game Boy!?
3D Game Boy!
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Nintendo has yet another paradigm-shifting trick up its sleeve — and yet somehow, it does. On the heels of its overwhelming success with both its Wii and DS platforms, the company has released plans on how it expects to own the next round of handheld gaming — by bringing 3D technology to handheld gaming.
Nintendo has announced that a new handheld, called the Nintendo 3DS, will be released sometime during the company’s next financial year (which is from April 2010 to March 2011). The system will deliver 3D graphics — importantly, though, it will do so without the need for 3D glasses. It will be backwards compatible with all current Nintendo DS games, and it will be making its public debut at E3, which takes place in Los Angeles this June. And that, right now, is really all that’s known about the 3DS.
There are rumors circulating that the console will include front- and back-facing cameras, which it will use to track both the movement of the device as well as the movement of the player. This movement, supposedly, will then be used to display the 3D effects, similar to the approach taken by a DSi title called Hidden Picture.
While Nintendo has certainly messed this kind of thing up before (read: the massive flop that was Virtual Boy), I’m finding it hard not to preemptively chalk yet another era of handheld world domination up to the five-steps-ahead-of-the-game Miyamoto and crew.
RollingSound 