Topic: 3DS Cartridges Could Store Up to 8GB

[ThePerm]

some size projection prediction i made a couple months ago

[Kytim89]

I apologize for bringing up the Final Fantasy, Dead Space, Gears of War, and Mass Effect on 3DS thing again but those are series that I like having on the go. I mean the 3DS seems to already have the potential of unlimited expansion and storage is the key to that expansion.

[Adrock]

Just out of curiosity, with the exception of Final Fantasy, how can you like having those series on the go when not a single one of them has ever been available on a handheld before? You have no point of reference for that claim. I supposed you want those on 3DS, but honestly, besides of Horde in Gears of War, the gameplay of those series don't really lend themselves well to on-the-go gaming. I'm just a little confused because wanting those series on a console you own or are planning to own is one thing and wanting them on a handheld gaming system specifically for the purpose of playing them outside of the confines of your house is another... entirely.

[Ian Sane]

A major part of the appeal of the Final Fantasy series is its cutting edge presentation.  You play FF for the graphics, sound and story.  FF games are supposed to be artistically ambitious (even if they end up being silly).

Portables are not ideal for that type of experience.  You want to see that on your HDTV with surround sound in the comfy confines of your living room.  It isn't really designed to co-exist with the distractions of being in public or be presented on a tiny screen with rinky-dink speakers.  I've always felt the best portable titles are games like Tetris where it is all gameplay.  The disctractions and the presentation don't matter.

But there are people who like to watch movies on their phone while they're on the bus.  How one can pay enough attention to the film while keeping an eye out for their stop and tuning out the sounds of traffic and noisy passengers I will never know.  I can't do it.  But I feel I need a certain amount of focus and attention to really take in a movie.  Other people don't care and they would probably be fine with playing Final Fantasy or any game on the go.  I know people that turn TVs on to just have something going on the background.  I'm either watching TV or I'm not and I get pretty peeved if someone is distracting me while I try to watch.

The whole hook of the 3DS is kind of odd for a portable.  Ideally I would want 3D in my home on a big screen.  The whole concept is so visually oriented and that is better suited to a home console.  Portables are all about convenience.  It is entirely because of the way Nintendo is doing 3D that a portable is needed.  They need a narrow viewing angle and to provide their own screen.  A portable is the only way to do it affordably at this point.

If you feel that Final Fantasy would benefit from 3D THEN it would make sense for it to be on the 3DS.  And I mean the 3DS is the target platform and this isn't just some watered console port or a spinoff.  FF is all about the presentation so the benefits that 3D adds to the presentation would have to be significant enough to compromise the graphics quality, which would have to take a hit.  Otherwise you're pretty much stripping FF of everything that makes it special in the first place and it just becomes a name.

[TJ Spyke]

But there are people who like to watch movies on their phone while they're on the bus.  How one can pay enough attention to the film while keeping an eye out for their stop and tuning out the sounds of traffic and noisy passengers I will never know.  I can't do it.  But I feel I need a certain amount of focus and attention to really take in a movie.  Other people don't care and they would probably be fine with playing Final Fantasy or any game on the go.  I know people that turn TVs on to just have something going on the background.  I'm either watching TV or I'm not and I get pretty peeved if someone is distracting me while I try to watch.

FF doesn't have to be cutting edge, that has nothing to do with the games. It's just that SE are graphic whores. Hell, some of the SNES ones are better than the more recent ones.
Headphones (in fact, many bus systems require you to use headphones with any electronic device). You can also watch some of the movie and then pause it, it only takes a second to look up.

[Ian Sane]

FF doesn't have to be cutting edge, that has nothing to do with the games. It's just that SE are graphic whores. Hell, some of the SNES ones are better than the more recent ones.

You do realize that those "better" SNES games were in fact very cutting edge at the time of release?  Even in the "glory days" Final Fantasy was a very ambitious game.  The NES games also stand out in comparison to other NES games of the time.
 
It seems that Square Enix regards a cutting edge presentation as an important element of the main Final Fantasy series.  This is less important with Dragon Quest which seems to be all about old-school design.  DQ could be "demoted" to portables smoothly because the design did not require cutting edge hardware.  FF seems to so unless SE was totally nuts for 3D, there would be no real purpose in moving FF to the 3DS like they did with DQ and the DS.  I feel it would compromise the FF experience in exchange for portability.
 
And I know what headphones are.  Still not good enough.  Turning the volume up enough to drown out distractions makes it more difficult to be aware of one's surroundings, which is essential when in public.  You cannot immerse yourself in a game or movie on the bus.  You have to compromise in some way.

[TJ Spyke]

You cannot immerse yourself in a game or movie on the bus. You have to compromise in some way.

I have never had a problem with this, multitasking is not a problem for me.

[Kytim89]

As for the series of games that I want on the go, Capcom is creating a major franchise on the go with Resident Evil Revelations and I want to see other big franchises that have never had a major handheld iteration.

[ThePerm]

i just want awesome games...anywhere

[Kytim89]

i just want awesome games...anywhere

What would it mean for the gaming industry as a whole if major franchises such as Mass Effect found a home on the 3DS with similar production values as its console brethren?

[Plugabugz]

You cannot immerse yourself in a game or movie on the bus. You have to compromise in some way.

I have never had a problem with this, multitasking is not a problem for me.

I have noise cancellation headphones and on the Jubilee Line here in London in particular it gets so noisy the screech makes any other sound impossble to hear. The music disappears behind the screech. Same on a couple other lines and the automated voiceover systems on some buses; how someone sat in his seat on Tuesday watching a movie on his iPad i will never know.

[Ian Sane]

What would it mean for the gaming industry as a whole if major franchises such as Mass Effect found a home on the 3DS with similar production values as its console brethren?

I think at some point in the future the technology will be cheap enough that portables and consoles will be one in the same.  That doesn't mean videogames will be confined entirely to small screens.  Either your portable will be able to connect to your TV and connect to seperate controllers for when you're at home or they'll just offer both console and portable models and you go with what suits your needs - like choosing between a laptop or a desktop computer.

[Kytim89]

What would it mean for the gaming industry as a whole if major franchises such as Mass Effect found a home on the 3DS with similar production values as its console brethren?

I think at some point in the future the technology will be cheap enough that portables and consoles will be one in the same.  That doesn't mean videogames will be confined entirely to small screens.  Either your portable will be able to connect to your TV and connect to seperate controllers for when you're at home or they'll just offer both console and portable models and you go with what suits your needs - like choosing between a laptop or a desktop computer.

This is why I am so excited for the 3DS is because everything that I have seen from it implies that it will blur the line between console and handheld gaming. If not now, then when the 3DS has been on the market for three or five years then the line could be nullified.
 
This is why I want those titles that I mentioned on the 3DS because they were never possible on the DS and it would symbolize an evolution for handhelds. Also, my ability to play console games is diminishing and it seems to me that handhelds, particularly ones made by Nintendo, is getting easier to use as I get older.

[Adrock]

A desktop and a laptop essentially do the same thing. After DS, handheld started doing things that weren't possible on consoles. After Wii, consoles started doing things that weren't possible on handhelds. Sony tried delivering a console experience in a handheld which looks great on paper, but failed in execution. From a business perspective, Nintendo was smart enough to do something about the rapidly blurring lines between console and handheld. They don't really offer the same experience anymore. Some games require the touchscreen and a quick glance to the top screen whereas glancing from the touchscreen to a TV messes with the experience.

If you plug a handheld into a TV, you're left with no controller. I suppose the introduction of peripherals is a possible solution, but not everyone is going to buy optional accessories. It becomes messier than it needs to at that point. Consoles and handhelds should offer different experiences and remain separate entities.

[Ian Sane]

See I personally can't stand portables.  I can never find a comfortable position to use them in that doesn't hurt my neck.  The screen is attached to the controller and I tend to move the controller around a bit when I play games.  As a result I move the screen which I'm trying to look at and the whole thing is disorienting.  I didn't really start to love my GBA until I got the GB Player.  In retrospect my DS was a waste of money.  I have no use for it as a portable and playing games on it is a frustrating chore.  The whole set up just doesn't work for me and I likely won't get the 3DS.

At this point the blurring between console and portable does not excite me because it seems like the direction it will go at first is just offering a portable.  The 3D feature prohibits Nintendo from making this thing attach to a TV.  Yeah, the feature could just be disabled when connected to a TV but I know that isn't how Nintendo rolls.  Portables are also big in Japan and Nintendo plans everything around Japan.  I could see a switchover where the 3DS is Nintendo's primary focus and the Wii or Wii 2 is just the casual focused gaming machine for the living room.  I can see the possibility that next gen Nintendo would put the "real" Zelda, Metroid and Mario on the 3DS.  Traditionally Nintendo has very clearly treated their console as the "A" platform and the portable as the "B".  I could see that flipping around.

Having one platform available in both portable and home console formats is ideal because then it just becomes about the personal preferences of the user.  I know other people like me that own portables entirely to play the exclusive games that system offers and that it is practically never used in a portable setting.  It would nice if there was no need for that phenomenon to exist.  The idea of major console game series being moved to portables upsets me.  Essentially it would be like taking those games away from me.  I can't play them the way I want to anymore (thinking about it, motion control upsets me in a similar way).  But on the other hand, Kytim89, if consoles don't work for you anymore then you're in a similar situation where all sorts of games are effectively cut off from you.  Both situations are undesirable but it has been a necessary evil for portables since matching the technology of consoles was just not cost feasible.  But if that restriction no longer applies then it really is stupid and arbitrary for this game or that game to only be playable in one format.

Though stuff like this 3D screen and motion control keep consoles and portables seperate.  Nintendo could always use those features to justify keeping the formats independant of each other.  Of course 3D is optional since it can be turned off for all games and not all games require motion control.  There isn't really anything wrong with having a handful of games that only work on one format - realistically it's no different then how some games require a light gun or an instrument - but, again, that isn't how Nintendo rolls.  If they create a justification to have two completely different systems they can get us all to buy both.  I figure as the line blurs between consoles and portables Nintendo will introduce more and more "unique features" to artificially differentiate between the two formats.

However the one-format concept could catch on if Japan becomes more and more portable focused and North America becomes more and more console focused (due to Americans loving their home theatre setups).  The incompatibility between the two markets may necessitate a common ground where one format is used that serves both markets.

[Kytim89]

See I personally can't stand portables.  I can never find a comfortable position to use them in that doesn't hurt my neck.  The screen is attached to the controller and I tend to move the controller around a bit when I play games.  As a result I move the screen which I'm trying to look at and the whole thing is disorienting.  I didn't really start to love my GBA until I got the GB Player.  In retrospect my DS was a waste of money.  I have no use for it as a portable and playing games on it is a frustrating chore.  The whole set up just doesn't work for me and I likely won't get the 3DS.

At this point the blurring between console and portable does not excite me because it seems like the direction it will go at first is just offering a portable.  The 3D feature prohibits Nintendo from making this thing attach to a TV.  Yeah, the feature could just be disabled when connected to a TV but I know that isn't how Nintendo rolls.  Portables are also big in Japan and Nintendo plans everything around Japan.  I could see a switchover where the 3DS is Nintendo's primary focus and the Wii or Wii 2 is just the casual focused gaming machine for the living room.  I can see the possibility that next gen Nintendo would put the "real" Zelda, Metroid and Mario on the 3DS.  Traditionally Nintendo has very clearly treated their console as the "A" platform and the portable as the "B".  I could see that flipping around.

Having one platform available in both portable and home console formats is ideal because then it just becomes about the personal preferences of the user.  I know other people like me that own portables entirely to play the exclusive games that system offers and that it is practically never used in a portable setting.  It would nice if there was no need for that phenomenon to exist.  The idea of major console game series being moved to portables upsets me.  Essentially it would be like taking those games away from me.  I can't play them the way I want to anymore (thinking about it, motion control upsets me in a similar way).  But on the other hand, Kytim89, if consoles don't work for you anymore then you're in a similar situation where all sorts of games are effectively cut off from you.  Both situations are undesirable but it has been a necessary evil for portables since matching the technology of consoles was just not cost feasible.  But if that restriction no longer applies then it really is stupid and arbitrary for this game or that game to only be playable in one format.

Though stuff like this 3D screen and motion control keep consoles and portables seperate.  Nintendo could always use those features to justify keeping the formats independant of each other.  Of course 3D is optional since it can be turned off for all games and not all games require motion control.  There isn't really anything wrong with having a handful of games that only work on one format - realistically it's no different then how some games require a light gun or an instrument - but, again, that isn't how Nintendo rolls.  If they create a justification to have two completely different systems they can get us all to buy both.  I figure as the line blurs between consoles and portables Nintendo will introduce more and more "unique features" to artificially differentiate between the two formats.

However the one-format concept could catch on if Japan becomes more and more portable focused and North America becomes more and more console focused (due to Americans loving their home theatre setups).  The incompatibility between the two markets may necessitate a common ground where one format is used that serves both markets.

I agree with everything you say, Ian. I agree that some kind of middle ground is going to merge between consoles and handhelds. I have to admit that I do not want the 3DS so much for 3D as just for more powerful graphics and features. Hell, Nintndo could have just called it the DS 2 and I would have been impressed.
 
I would like to play to Gears of War on my front porch.

Could someone remove "I'd Like a Pony, too" please. Who wrote that by the way?