Be Excellent To Each Other

Bet my TT card won't work, will it?

Almost certainly not.

Vorsprung borked.

3DS, here I come! ^_^

Stop buying every console other than a 360

What's that, Malabar... there's a Nuon up for grabs on eBay, you say?

Word on the street Nintendo are planning a £40 rrp for 3DS games.

So about £30-35 in reality. 360/PS3 games have an RRP for £50, but obviously no one sells at those prices, so I guess they're looking at 360/PS3 prices minus 20%, although the tendency towards £18 at online retailers is because there is no VAT on items shipped from the channel islands under £18, so perhaps 3DS games would be discounted to under £18 quicker than PS3/360 games are.

Obviously bets are off during the launch period. Prices will be high across the board for a while.

I actually read that as "a £40 rip".

Nintendo aren't getting another bean off me. Cunts.

Pah. You and your insistence on paying in beans...

Confirmed to be region locked.

*smirk*

This is a good thing.

Why?

Because of what happens when someone un-region locks it.

Ah, ok. Yeah, I made that argument in a post on savygamer. Basically region locking it means it will probably get hacked sooner. Silly Nintendo.

At the expected £200+ I won't be buying on on launch - I'll wait for the second gen like I did with the DSLite

Bit o' maths about why I expect it will be £250.

Lewie,

is this the first time the release price of a handheld console has been higher (or the same in Yen) than the current console of the same manufacturer?

Not too sure. I reckon probably though.

If memory serves me right, the PS2 was more expensive than the PSP when it first came out. If you don't count the various hardware revisions of the PSP, then I'd say yes.

Although, it makes sense. Nintendo charged a lot less than they could have for the Wii, but they obviously didn't know that at the time. Same goes for the DS.

This time round, they are expecting it to be a success. They're probably right too, but I suppose it could be their undoing.

I think Nintendo may find out the hard way that the price point was instrumental in the success of the Wii and the DS.

But then, Kinect is apparently a great success, so what do I know.

Hmmm, battery life looks pretty shite compared to the DSL:

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/01/10/n ... nch_specs/

Didn't the PS2 launch at £400? And people say the PS3 is expensive!

Whilst that doesn't sound great, bear in mind that Nintendo are always fairly conservative with battery life quotes. That's also probably on the brightest setting (which makes a lot of difference).

I'm waiting for reports from people other than Nintendo about battery life before I get too hung up on that.

I think we had just got used to consoles being cheaper than that and it was a bit of a shock to the system.
As you say, it wasn't particularly worse than many other new release machines.

Go back to the Amiga and the A500 launched at £500 and then dropped to £400 after about 6 months but was still pretty high for a long time.

I wish Nintendo every success with the launch of their latest product.

Well, this is confirmed now as coming out over here on 25th March. Looks like the price is going to be about £230.

play.com are saying £219.99.

The market hasn't set a price yet, I'd wait a bit before deciding.

I'd like to see it in action, but it'll take a lot of convincing to get me to cough up over £200 for one of these.

I don't see the point in buying an EU region 3DS if a US one can be imported for under £200, and with the region-locking, the US import option sounds smarter all-round, really.

Wouldn't that mean you had to import all the games too, though?

By the time import duty, etc is paid on each game, would you be saving much?

History says that you'd probably save money on new releases buying from the US, but have much less access to heavily discounted game too, not to mention less resale value.

If you're the type to buy only new games at release, importing will probably save you money.

If you are more likely to buy games after a while, and keep an eye out for cheaper games, a local console is probably the best bet.

Until the region protection gets hacked, of course.

On new games, yes, definitely. Also, games tend to get earlier releases in the US. Or actually get a release in North America whilst they don't here...

These days, many of us buy our games online with a credit card anyway, so importing is no more effort, really. Just the postage time is obviously longer.

Yes, that is true, importing a console will mean you miss out on random bargains that Game or Asda or wherever will offer. Then again, yes, the region-locking is going to be broken at one point, and who knows, that might coincide with then 3DS games will start to be commonly discounted?

Lower resale value? Yes, if you 'trade in' at Game or Gamestation or wherever, but not if you go the eBay (or even better) specialist nerd forum sales route. And that's not an issue for me personally, as I avoid retail chain trade-in cons like the plague.

Best deal yet:
Nintendo 3DS + Super Monkey Ball 3D – £217.91 delivered

Gone up to £227.91 now.

It's good to see that bundled offers are starting to emerge for EU region 3DSes, although I'd personally be hesitant to pre-order with a game that might be crap. (We won't know which are the 'good' 3DS games, will we? Launches near-simultaneous worldwide, unlike the six months wait for the original DS, no time for reviews to seep through.) Still, on reflection, better to risk a single game bundle, than the inevitable exploitable 'forced bundles' that Game et al will be selling if there is any 3DS shortage.

My pick of the launch lineup is Layton I think.

Edit: Wait, that might be Japan launch only

I couldn't possibly pre-order. I need to see the 3DS in action as I still have no idea what the 3D effect will be like.

How much depth does it have? Is it a fixed level of depth? Is it just one layer in front of another (like a pop-up book)? Will it just create perspective or will it actually introduce 3D-based gameplay ideas?

I mean, I went to see Saw 3D when it was out and, for the most part, the 3D was just there to show you that a chair was infront of a wall as opposed to having shit leap out at you.

I didn't think I could care less about the DS and other handheld games.

I was wrong. Two-Fucking-Hundred-and-Thirty-Fucking-Quid?

It's got a depth slider control.

I watched the trailer for the 3DS last night - I didn't realise it comes with two outer cameras to take photos in 3D. Nice idea but I'd have been tempted to leave it off and shave a few quid off the price.

Have to say, there's a lot to like about the capabilities of the machine itself. The price is a spicy meatball though.

I'm starting to care about it. But I figure ill let it bed in and pick up the 3DS lite. The 3DS is uuuuuugly, and I'm guessing at this point that's kinda intentional part of their business plan.

Aye, but Nintendo have a nasty habit of not having any games for fucking ages after launch.

Needless to say, I won't be buying one. The last Nintendo console I didn't sell after less than a year was the SNES, and that era is well and truly gone.

I'll be having a play with a 3DS this afternoon. Opinions later.

Huzzah! No more friend codes.

Basically not very impressed. Proper write up tomorrow evening I think.

I am disappointed by Monday nights lack of write up.

Yeah, I'm struggling with trying to not sound too negative.

since the gba and ds were so much improved after 1,5 year, i'll wait

I see Amazon are offering these for the bargain pre-order price of £197....

I'm not even slightly tempted, I would have a go just to see what it's like but I'm not buying one just for that reason!