Nintendo Admits 3DS Won't Beat Regular DS on Battery Life

[Grounogeos]

A DS Lite has a pretty good charge from what I remember. Even if the 3DS is a fair bit less, it'd still last for a while.

Either way, Nintendo is being honest from the start instead of waiting 6 months after the 3DS is out to say "Oh, did we forget to tell you guys that the 3DS has a shorter battery life?" To me, that's a good enough reason to not complain.

 

[Xanthious]

you do remember this is a handheld, right? They tend to lag behind the home consoles a little bit.

I'm not the one out there telling people that it is "the most powerful Nintendo console to date". Those are Nintendo's words. They are the ones bragging about how powerful this thing is. Seems to me if your going to brag about how powerful your new console is it should at least meet the raw specs to run a game engine that's more than 3 years old.

A reasonable argument, Xanthious, but what exactly are you concerned it will secretly download? Surveillance software? Brainwashing? Could you clarify what troubles you about automatic upgrades?

It simply doesn't matter what I believe it will or won't download. The fact any phone, portable console, laptop, etc that I own I don't want it putting anything on there without my permission. It boils down to who actually owns the damn console. If I own it I should have say to what goes on it. I shouldn't have to take steps so that it install software against my will.

It's a very slippery slope when you let companies do whatever the hell they want with your hardware. Look at the iPhone, there is software on that which can enable the mic, tell what kind of firmware its running and take pictures with the front facing camera all remotely and without your permission. This same software also allows them to remotely disable your iPhone if they don't like something. Sure they claim it's done in the spirit of security but really, do you want to give any company that kind of access to your legally owned hardware?

 

[Electrogecko]

So you would say that installing software without asking permission while it is off/hibernating as long as there is a wifi connection it can connect to doesn't count as secretly? Seriously, most people who buy this won't even know about this "feature" it will just update w/o their permission. Having to kill network connectivity any time I'm not there to personally monitor it to keep unwanted software off my console doesn't seem to me to be a good thing.

As for the battery life, does or does not the article read "Iwata's comments seem to imply that the battery life on the 3DS is significantly less than the regular DS"?

Finally, is it somehow outside the realm of reasonable thought to believe that if a company is releasing a console they call "their most powerful system to date" that that console at least meet the minimum specifications to run a gaming engine that's over three years old?

I'm not making these facts up. I wouldn't be saying these things if they weren't being reported on. Maybe instead of being upset that I'm attacking your beloved Nintendo maybe you should start looking a little closer a the 3DS and you might realize it's just an outdated gimmick.

Idk how anybody can complain about automatic firmware updates.....unless you're a pirate, but like I said, there's a switch to turn off wireless communications....and no- it's not "secret." For fucks sake, theres a light that flashes when the console recieves information. You continue to impress me with your lack of knowledge.

Battery life- Go read the interview if you want the real story. I gathered from it that the battery life will not be that much worse than the DS', and if you want to improve it, turn off the wireless switch- That shouldn't be a big deal for you considering how much your complaining about the connectivity right?

Processing Power- Nintendo never said that this is their most powerful system to date. This is just what the hype has generated. Once again......ignorance on your part. And once more, you've complained about the power and the battery life of the system in the same post when they are interchangable. Inverse proportionality- do you know what that is? (Processing power)*(Battery life)= Constant. As one goes up, the other goes down- you can't have both without making the system bulkier and more expensive. And why do you insist that a consoles value depends on it's pixel pushing ability?

There you go throwing around that word "gimmick." You clearly don't understand what it means. If a touchscreen, gyroscope, accelerometer, and sterioscopic 3d are all gimmicks, than the analog stick, high-definition display, and buttons are all gimmicks too.

 

[starwarsgeek]

you do remember this is a handheld, right? They tend to lag behind the home consoles a little bit.

I'm not the one out there telling people that it is "the most powerful Nintendo console to date". Those are Nintendo's words. They are the ones bragging about how powerful this thing is. Seems to me if your going to brag about how powerful your new console is it should at least meet the raw specs to run a game engine that's more than 3 years old.

Yes, it is Nintendo's most powerful system yet (from what I've read, anyway. A link to Nintendo saying this themselves would be much appreciated). But if they somehow, let's say, made it about as powerful as the Xbox360, how would the battery life be then? It's one of the challenges of the handheld market--developers have to find some kind of middle ground between graphical power and battery life. Considering Nintendo has pretty much conquered the handheld market for several generations, it seems their "lag behind five years" approach works. It's not their most powerful system because they want to show off what they're capable of in that area; it's their most powerful because they chose to do the exact opposite with the Wii, leading to the 3DS not having a lot of competition in that regard.

Besides, have you seen how many developers are already working on the thing? It's not like loosing the UE3 will actually hurt them


Edit: You know what, the entire debate is pointless. It has a 3D effect without the glasses, a huge variety of control techniques, a nice list of big, third party developers (hopefully a sign of things to come with Nintendo's next home console), a virtual console for handheld classics, backwards compatability with the DS, and some nice extras (internet browsing and a 3D camera...which is pretty darn cool). The thing will be great, who cares if the 360 and PS3 are outshinining the HANDHELD of next generation graphically? Who cares if Nintendo came up with a creative way to fight piracy? (By the way, if it's showcased in the trailer, then it is not secret).

 

[Xanthious]

Idk how anybody can complain about automatic firmware updates.....unless you're a pirate, but like I said, there's a switch to turn off wireless communications....and no- it's not "secret." For fucks sake, theres a light that flashes when the console recieves information. You continue to impress me with your lack of knowledge.

Why don't you ask the PS3 owners who keep having functionality removed from their consoles via firmware updates if they think automatic firmware updates would be a good thing. If someone puts their 3DS in a backpack or pocket or purse that flashing light will mean absolutely zero. The fact of the matter is automatic updates should be something you can opt into not something you have to opt out of by killing network connectivity entirely.


I understand you are probably one of those people that will let these companies spoon feed you shit and ask for more with a smile on your face. However, those of us that think for ourselves like to actually own and use our hardware w/o the manufacturer popping in all the time putting this and that on our hardware and telling us how and when we can use it.

Battery life- Go read the interview if you want the real story. I gathered from it that the battery life will not be that much worse than the DS', and if you want to improve it, turn off the wireless switch- That shouldn't be a big deal for you considering how much your complaining about the connectivity right?

"Iwata's comments seem to imply that the battery life on the 3DS is significantly less than the regular DS"? . . . yeah that's a quote from the article. Feel free to google the word significantly.

Processing Power- Nintendo never said that this is their most powerful system to date. This is just what the hype has generated. Once again......ignorance on your part. And once more, you've complained about the power and the battery life of the system in the same post when they are interchangable. Inverse proportionality- do you know what that is? (Processing power)*(Battery life)= Constant. As one goes up, the other goes down- you can't have both without making the system bulkier and more expensive. And why do you insist that a consoles value depends on it's pixel pushing ability?

I'm unable to find the exact quote word for word however most recently they came out and said "The biggest reason why we developed the portable [with high specs] is because we didn't want developers to think that they couldn't develop their titles for Nintendo game machines due to the specs." (You can find the full story on Kotaku). I will refrain from bringing up anything about this justifying my position on the Wii but I will say if your going to brag about your system having all this power don't you think it should be able to at least meet the minimum specs for a game engine over 3 years old?

As for battery life and specs being connected, I fully grasp that. Which is why I challenge if the battery life is going to be as bad as they claim you'd think it would have a bit more kick under the hood.

There you go throwing around that word "gimmick." You clearly don't understand what it means. If a touchscreen, gyroscope, accelerometer, and sterioscopic 3d are all gimmicks, than the analog stick, high-definition display, and buttons are all gimmicks too.

If it makes you feel better you just keep telling yourself that . . . .I guess that neither were R.O.B., the Power Glove, the Power Pad, The Virtual Boy, The Game Boy Micro, The Super Scope 6, or any of the other bad Nintendo gimmicks I may have passed over.

 

[starwarsgeek]

"Iwata's comments seem to imply that the battery life on the 3DS is significantly less than the regular DS"? . . . yeah that's a quote form the article.

That is nothing more than Mr.Westbrook's interpretation of Iwata's comments.

 

[starwarsgeek]

There you go throwing around that word "gimmick." You clearly don't understand what it means. If a touchscreen, gyroscope, accelerometer, and sterioscopic 3d are all gimmicks, than the analog stick, high-definition display, and buttons are all gimmicks too.

People do tend to use the word incorrectly on this website (I think they either believe it means something they don't like, something gaming-related that's not a D-pad, analogue stick, buttons, or increased graphics, or something Yahtzee hates). If anything, the color of the handheld is the gimmick.

Edit:

If it makes you feel better you just keep telling yourself that . . . .I guess that neither were R.O.B., the Power Glove, the Power Pad, The Virtual Boy, The Game Boy Micro, The Super Scope 6, or any of the other bad Nintendo gimmicks I may have passed over

R.O.B, the Power Glove, the Power Pad, and the Super Scope were peripherals

The Virtual Boy was a crappy "portable" console.

The Game Boy Micro was an updated model of the Gameboy. (Considering how bulky the gameboy was, it was a nice change)
--Edit: Oops, I was thinking of the Pocket Gameboy. I googled this and it does look too small to operate...--

None of those are gimmicks (although most--possibly all, since I honestly never heard of the gameboy micro--of them are crap)

 

[RAMBO22]

I don't think this news really matters to 95% of people who were already planning on purchasing the 3DS next spring. If you didn't postulate that a DS with 3D capability and more processing punch was going to take more juice then you're just not thinking very hard, anyways. I think most people will be more than happy to sacrifice a bit of battery life for 3D capability on a portable platform.

 

[Xanthious]

People do tend to use the word incorrectly on this website (I think they either believe it means something they don't like, something gaming-related that's not a D-pad, analogue stick, buttons, or increased graphics, or something Yahtzee hates). If anything, the color of the handheld is the gimmick.

Tell ya what, how about you wander over to dictionary.com and look at the meaning of the word "gimmick" and read down to where it says "an ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, esp. one designed to attract attention or increase appeal" or "to equip or embellish with unnecessary features, esp. in order to increase salability, acceptance, etc." Now tell me motion controls aren't a "gimmick" or that 3D technology isn't a "gimmick". By the very definition of the word the Wii, and the 3DS are consoles designed around a gimmick.

I get you and Slappy up there are the worst kind of Nintendo fanboys but even the two of you should be able to crawl out of your Mario sleeping bag long enough to see that this is a company that is behind the times and relies on gimmicks rather than quality gaming to get over, not with actual gamers (oh no they gave up on Nintendo a long time ago) but rather the masses. . . . or maybe you can't see that being fanboys and all.

 

[starwarsgeek]

I get you and Slappy up there are the worst kind of Nintendo fanboys but even the two of you have to see that this is a company that is behind the times and relies on gimmicks rather than quality gaming to get over, not with actual gamers, oh no they gave up on Nintendo a long time ago, but rather the masses. . . . or maybe you can't see that being fanboys and all.

And this why debating with trolls is so much fun. Funniest thing I've read all day!

 

[PureChaos]

not realy surprised as it has a lot more to deal with

 

[Semudara]

People do tend to use the word incorrectly on this website (I think they either believe it means something they don't like, something gaming-related that's not a D-pad, analogue stick, buttons, or increased graphics, or something Yahtzee hates). If anything, the color of the handheld is the gimmick.

Tell ya what, how about you wander over to dictionary.com and look at the meaning of the word "gimmick" and read down to where it says "an ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, esp. one designed to attract attention or increase appeal" or "to equip or embellish with unnecessary features, esp. in order to increase salability, acceptance, etc." Now tell me motion controls aren't a "gimmick" or that 3D technology isn't a "gimmick". By the very definition of the word the Wii, and the 3DS are consoles designed around a gimmick.

I get you and Slappy up there are the worst kind of Nintendo fanboys but even the two of you should be able to crawl out of your Mario sleeping bag long enough to see that this is a company that is behind the times and relies on gimmicks rather than quality gaming to get over, not with actual gamers (oh no they gave up on Nintendo a long time ago) but rather the masses. . . . or maybe you can't see that being fanboys and all.

Yeah, because you're not a fanboy. At all.

Seriously, we get it. You're opinionated. Some of your points are valid and some of them are just plain ignorant, but you don't plan on changing your mind in the slightest, and you're probably not about to convince anyone here. If you don't have the intention of conceding even a single point, then neither will the people you're debating with. So what's the point?

 

[DonnieDio]

Nintendo have already said, quite some time ago, that 3DS will have a similar battery life to DSLite, which is to say between 8 and 10 hours. That's less then all other DS models, but surely nobodies going to tell me its not enough or at all disappointing for such a device?

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

If this is the case, I think it should come with a free car DC adapter (a pipe dream, I know). I'm still psyched for it and I think I'd pay for 3D effects if they are as awesome as advertised with battery life. And who knows, maybe there will be a better battery pack made up by a third party company to boost its endurance a year or two after launch.

Although the cradle, if the cord can't come out and be connected the 3DS, is a stupid idea. Out of battery life? Sorry, you have to wait a few hours before resuming. Give it the same damn cord the DS Lite used.

Nevertheless, this isn't the bleakest news I've ever heard.

[sub][sub][sub]*rubs hands in anticipation of Pokemon*[/sub][/sub][/sub]

Oh yeah guys, stop feeding the troll.

Agreed. There is going to be some mod action here if they keep going at it.

 

[DonnieDio]

To be honest it isn't even bad news never mind bleak. As usual its a few words being made into more then they were intended to be. 8-10 hours playtime is more then enough for a games machine, and more then I expected from a device which does everything 3DS does. Try playing a 3D game on Iphone 4 for 8 hours.

 

[Electrogecko]

Idk how anybody can complain about automatic firmware updates.....unless you're a pirate, but like I said, there's a switch to turn off wireless communications....and no- it's not "secret." For fucks sake, theres a light that flashes when the console recieves information. You continue to impress me with your lack of knowledge.

Why don't you ask the PS3 owners who keep having functionality removed from their consoles via firmware updates if they think automatic firmware updates would be a good thing. If someone puts their 3DS in a backpack or pocket or purse that flashing light will mean absolutely zero. The fact of the matter is automatic updates should be something you can opt into not something you have to opt out of by killing network connectivity entirely.


I understand you are probably one of those people that will let these companies spoon feed you shit and ask for more with a smile on your face. However, those of us that think for ourselves like to actually own and use our hardware w/o the manufacturer popping in all the time putting this and that on our hardware and telling us how and when we can use it.

Battery life- Go read the interview if you want the real story. I gathered from it that the battery life will not be that much worse than the DS', and if you want to improve it, turn off the wireless switch- That shouldn't be a big deal for you considering how much your complaining about the connectivity right?

"Iwata's comments seem to imply that the battery life on the 3DS is significantly less than the regular DS"? . . . yeah that's a quote from the article. Feel free to google the word significantly.

Processing Power- Nintendo never said that this is their most powerful system to date. This is just what the hype has generated. Once again......ignorance on your part. And once more, you've complained about the power and the battery life of the system in the same post when they are interchangable. Inverse proportionality- do you know what that is? (Processing power)*(Battery life)= Constant. As one goes up, the other goes down- you can't have both without making the system bulkier and more expensive. And why do you insist that a consoles value depends on it's pixel pushing ability?

I'm unable to find the exact quote word for word however most recently they came out and said "The biggest reason why we developed the portable [with high specs] is because we didn't want developers to think that they couldn't develop their titles for Nintendo game machines due to the specs." (You can find the full story on Kotaku). I will refrain from bringing up anything about this justifying my position on the Wii but I will say if your going to brag about your system having all this power don't you think it should be able to at least meet the minimum specs for a game engine over 3 years old?

As for battery life and specs being connected, I fully grasp that. Which is why I challenge if the battery life is going to be as bad as they claim you'd think it would have a bit more kick under the hood.

There you go throwing around that word "gimmick." You clearly don't understand what it means. If a touchscreen, gyroscope, accelerometer, and sterioscopic 3d are all gimmicks, than the analog stick, high-definition display, and buttons are all gimmicks too.

If it makes you feel better you just keep telling yourself that . . . .I guess that neither were R.O.B., the Power Glove, the Power Pad, The Virtual Boy, The Game Boy Micro, The Super Scope 6, or any of the other bad Nintendo gimmicks I may have passed over.

Wow..... It's amazing how every time you post something you make an ass out of yourself. You continue to show supreme ignorance and stubbornness in the face of logic and objectivity. I want you to know that this is the last time I'll be complimenting your asinine ramblings with an intellectual response. You've already proven to me and most of the comment readers that you're a lost cause.

I'll give you that, ideally, there should be an option to opt out of auto-updates, but whether Nintendo wants to admit it or not, a major reason for this decision was piracy prevention, and it would be extremely stupid of them to allow their users to switch auto-updates off without losing all multi-player and DLC as well. This decision was made, above all else, to attract support for their console under the hopes that developer's profits won't be severely undercut, and will, in the long run, result in more high quality and high budget (a term that you appreciate) games. Unless you're concerned that they're going to install surveillance software or you're a pirate, there's nothing to complain about, and suggesting that I'm "one of those people that will let these companies spoon feed you shit and ask for more with a smile on your face" only makes you appear to be a prick and further proves my theory that you're a retarded troll. (Do you complain about the fact that your cellphone provider automatically updates the phone you payed for?)

When I said go read the interview I meant the one FROM THE SOURCE. THE ACTUAL INTERVIEW!!! Not the opinions of some random person. And if you're wondering why I'm using caps for these words, it's because YOU'RE STUPID. And once again, you attempt an insult by suggesting that I don't know what the word "significantly" means....I hope for the sake of your self-dignity that you're joking.

Of course you're "unable to find the exact quote word for word." You pulled that quote out of your ass along with the rest of your argument!!! And Nintendo never "bragged" about the processing power of the 3ds. If anything, they acted as if they're ashamed of it and tried to justify it. (which is exactly what they should do considering the fact graphical detail is negligible to the overall quality of a game- a fact that you can't seem to process- and severely adds to development and consumer costs)

On the subject of battery life vs. console power, do you honestly think that Nintendo left empty space in the 3ds? I'm sure they thought long and hard about the hardware design, and (thankfully) they chose to incorporate motion controls, advanced connectivity, and stereoscopy instead of a few extra polygons. I can understand if that makes the console unappealing to you, but to not appreciate that decision you'd have to be some kind of moron.

On the topic of the word "gimmick," you fail to realize that at one point, every control mechanism was your definition of a gimmick. The first shoulder buttons (Nintendo's) were a gimmick, the first control stick (also Nintendo's) was an even bigger gimmick, and HD (thankfully not Nintendo's) is to this date the most useless gimmick of all time. To say that the first touch screen and motion controls (both Nintendo's) are gimmicks or useless is INCREDIBLY idiotic considering that they've each made complete and inarguable improvements to certain types of games. Either you started playing dedicated video game consoles only recently, or, once again, you've shown how incredibly ignorant/stupid you are. Are you suggesting that the controller you use to play video games is the best there could possibly be and there's no room for improvement at all? Because if you are, you have absolutely no imagination and I feel sorry for you. Yes, not all of Nintendo's experiments are successful, but they're actually TRYING to expand the medium, (a philosophy that The Escapist wholly embraces along with all those who love video games and have any amount of common sense) which is much more than I can say about Sony and Microsoft. (granted, Kinect is original)

Stop being a self-degrading troll....I'm still LOLing over how narrow-minded your comments are. You somehow believe that by not going all out in the graphical detail department, Nintendo's games are not worth playing? L.....M.......F.....A......O

 

[CrystalShadow]

I'm unable to find the exact quote word for word however most recently they came out and said "The biggest reason why we developed the portable [with high specs] is because we didn't want developers to think that they couldn't develop their titles for Nintendo game machines due to the specs." (You can find the full story on Kotaku). I will refrain from bringing up anything about this justifying my position on the Wii but I will say if your going to brag about your system having all this power don't you think it should be able to at least meet the minimum specs for a game engine over 3 years old?

Do you even know anything about what 3 years of technological progression means?

Aside from the fact that whatever you're quoting is speculation by a developer based only on a set of very basic hardware stats (and trust me, you need to know a lot more than that to be certain if something will run or not.),

3 years represents an increase of about 4-8 times the processing power.
HOWEVER, we are talking about an engine which targeted the Xbox360, PS3, and PC's from that era.

All of which typically contain hardware that requires 150+ watts of power to run a game engine.

Even laptop PC's capable of running something like that would use 50 watts or so in all probability.

Do you know what the 3DS has to be able to run on? It'd be hard to be entirely sure, but considering devices like it's predecessor, you'd be looking at no more than about 2 watts.

Now, I doubt you can make this comparison (I think it's probably worse than this, to be honest), but if you can scale down the power requirements at about the same rate as you increase the performance (especially unlikely considering power requirements often go up when hardware gets faster, rather than remaining the same), and starting from the kind of hardware laptops use, you might just about be able to get that down to say, 6-7 watts.

Well, guess what? That's about 3-4 times as much power needed.
End result? Probably 1/3 to 1/4 the battery life.

Ooh. And look; The Iphone can run Unreal engine 3. (how well though? High graphics settings? Moderate? Low?)

Looking around a bit, the Iphone can apparently run out of power after as little of 3 hours of web browsing, and if my laptop is any indication, 3d gaming is a lot more demanding than browsing the internet.

Now, taking the battery life of a DSI and DS lite, we get between 3-4 and 9-14 hours for a DSi, which depends almost entirely on the screen brightness, and
5-8 and 15-19 hours for the DS lite, again depending on screen brightness.

So, a pretty typical runtime for an iphone under what for a PC is considered a 'low usage' load (meaning it could get a lot worse than that) is equivalent to the ABSOLUTE WORST CASE of a DSi, and half that of a DS lite.

Since the DSi is so much worse than the older DS lite, it seems more likely the 3DS is going to be near or possibly slightly worse than the DSi (though that would be bad for nintendo, which makes it seem unlikely.)

In any event, in typical use with medium screen brightness, the DSi still manages 6-9 hours of use, which isn't at all unrealistic from what I know of Nintendo handhelds.
The 3DS could be worse than this, but I highly doubt it will be (considering the DSi is already quite a bit worse than it's predecessors)

And... That's about 3 times the runtime of an Iphone, (though probably more. Anyone got any reliable figures for the runtime of an Iphone when playing a graphically demanding game?).

So, that's about consistent with my figures.

Which means, to be able to maintain the kind of battery life Nintendo handhelds have had in the past, you'd be looking at graphics that are about 4-5 hardware generations old.
That's, ooh. between 4 and 7.5 years...
And you wonder why a 3 year old engine won't run on it?

You'd need to cut the battery life by anything from 2 to 8 times (or increase the battery size by about that much) to compensate for the lack of technical advance that you proclaim as being as being no big deal...

 

[Xanthious]

-snip-

Again, I commend you on your wall of text! Paragraphs fella, paragraphs. See the post below yours? Take notes. She knows how to break down that wall o' text. I actually read that one. . . and she made good points.

You get an A for effort but sadly your finished product still needs work. Keep trying though. You got spunk kid!

However, after skimming over it briefly you still seem really angry. Were you hugged too much or not enough as a young child?