geeze, no need for the console

That's what they can use now, no doubt if they wanted to they can be larger as it becomes more economical. I have pretty much skipped the Wii with my DS.

No, more likely is that early 3DS games will be around 1GB and some of the last 3DS games may get up to 8GB. Same thing when we found out how large DS games could be. It will likely be several years before 3DS games get anywhere near that big.

I expect Resident Evil: Revelations to be a couple GB in size consider it's a full-length RE with voice acting and whatnot. I still don't think it's coming close to 8GB though.

Final Fantasy 3D is GO!!!!!


It will be the 1st multi-cart 3DS game clocking in at a whopping 13GB's in size

This is a level of storage that is on par with that of DVD 9 (only slightly less). If it were absolutely necessary, games could spill over onto 2 carts I guess, but this would be more than sufficient for 99.9% of games.

I'm sure in the not so distant future that if a high profile game was being made for the 3DS that needed more than the 8GB cart size limit, Nintendo would be able to produce a larger cart to avoid the multi-cart issues.

8GB's seems to be the limit of the current manufacturing process, but not necessarily the limit for the size of the card the 3DS could read.

The initial limit for DS cards was 128 megabytes, but we've seen games that use 256 meg and (I think) 512 meg carts.

That would be the recently released Ni no Kuni, which is the largest DS game released.

so Halo 3ds?

Find it funny how that solid state cartridges and stuff are rapidly catching up to media like DVDs (even surpassing it), something that at one time was considered archaic like with the N64. They could make the Wii 2 with cartridges again, that would be extremely ironic.

Cartridges that Nintendo uses today are usually flash memory, so it's not too surprising to see this much memory on a 3DS game. Even today, we don't even know the limit of the DS cartridge, all we know is that 512 MB is the highest size so far.

For along time I always believed that Nintendo and third parties would never return to cartridges, but with the price of flash cards dropping I am increasingly warming up to the idea of the return of cartridge based games, or atleast for Nintendo systems. 

I figure that whatever left over space that is left on the 3DS cartridges will be used for some kind of anti-piracy endeavor to prevent pirates from copying the games. Perhaps Nintendo will use holo-storage? Who knows, but it makes sense for them to do this?

If the Wii 2 does have cartridge based games, they will most likely have a storage ceiling of 16 GB and be about the size of a PS2 memory card.

Now I'm really starting to wonder if Nintendo will use cartridges for their next home system.

Join the dark side, young Skywalker.

Nintendo never wanted to use disc based media. They did so because they had to. More than the company's sheer arrogance, sticking to expensive cartridges doomed N64. Miyamoto made some of his best games during that generation, but obviously, not every game producer is Miyamoto. For once, Nintendo absolutely had to bend to the will of 3rd parties because for once they actually had a viable alternative. There are only 3 real advantages to using optical discs: cheaper to produce, larger storage capacity, and the ability to play movies/music. Nintendo ignored one of those right off the bat and, even then, Netflix streaming is making that less of an issue. Now, with price and storage capacity simply no longer major issues, it makes sense for Nintendo to re-adopt cartridges/cards and abandon a medium they never wanted to support in the first place. Nintendo has always been a company that valued the basics of video games. A loading screen means you aren't playing the game, even for 4 seconds or so. A scratched disc means you aren't playing the game because it's broken. Using cartridges/cards makes neither of those things problems. Not saying that abandoning disc based media is a guarantee, but it certainly makes sense and is more than a mere possibility.

Cartridges CAN play music and audio, it's just that they take up a lot of space (which is why developers wanted to switch to optical media for their larger storage). I don't see a console using cartridge based media though, discs are still cheaper and publishers would complain about the added cost of making cartridge games.

@ Adrock

NEVER! I'll never join the darkside. You have failed your highness. I am a forum troller, like my father before me.

I see Nintendo going back to cartridges because of security reasons. It is harder to duplicate a cartridge than a DVD. The question is whether this will bode well with third parties since they like having the latest technology. However, third parties might be attracted to cartridges for the same reason that Nintendo would be: security.

Have flash based cartridges advanced enough to do FMV and all the other stuff that CDs and DVDs do?

/facepalm

I imagine you stopped reading my post right before I mentioned "Netflix" otherwise you would have known that I was specifically referring to music and movies on CD/DVDs. Outside of the Homebrew channel, the Wii can't play DVD movies.

And publishers have never complained about using cards on DS and don't seem to mind that the trend is continuing with 3DS.

It's only a matter of storage capacity. Let's say a video file was 3GB, it would obviously fit on a 4GB card and a 8.5GB DVD, but it would look exactly the same on a TV/monitor. Of course, you can compress the file, but it would look worse. Savvy?

Really, did you not bother reading my post? They already can, and have for years. They just tend to have few of them because that stuff takes up a lot of space.

The difference between in-game graphics and cutscenes is diminishing to the point that FMVs will become extinct, if they have not done so already? This is going to save a lot of space on cartridges. Also, I over looked your post, TJ.

i face palmed too when i got to Tj's post.

God! Imagine how long DQ games are gonna be with that amount of storage! 600 hours anyone?

This might sound like a dumb question, but could the 3DS handle a game on the scale of Final Fantasy 13 if it has a big enough cartridge?

Nope, the game is so big that it actually comes on 3 Xbox 360 discs (and the PS3 version is over 30GB), there is no way the game could be released on 3DS unless they want to do like 4 cartridges.

So 3DS cartridges can store 8GB.  Well, that's cool and all but how much would such a cartridge cost?  Even if this is a possibility it doesn't mean that using such a large cartridge would be affordable.  With cartridge systems in the past cart sizes could vary significantly on the same system.  Usually larger carts became more common throughout the system's life.  That's because the bigger carts were more expensive to produce.  We even saw situations where bigger games, like some RPGs on the SNES, had a higher price then a typical game, thus passing the cost of the bigger cartridge to the consumer.

Companies want to maximize profits.  If they can cut this or that corner and save a few bucks they will.  With optical discs you can't really do that.  A DVD is a DVD.  They don't really make smaller DVDs that cost less to produce.  There are dual-layer DVDs but if your game is smaller than the standard DVD (or CD back in the PS1 days), tough luck.  You can't get corners.  You've got 4.7 GB whether or not you need it.  There is a cap on how much you can cut costs on the medium.

Carts don't have that limitation.  Suddenly you can cut manufacturing costs by being cheap with the medium.  You could quite easily have less than 4.7 GB.  So why not compress that FMV further or, hell, get rid of it outright to decrease the size of the cartridge and save money?  For years you would see games use a password because the publisher didn't want to splurge on a save battery for the cart.  The model gives third parties excuses.  They could fit a 4 GB game on a 3DS cart but maybe it costs a little more than a DVD.  Or maybe they've just decided that they only want to spend X amount of money for 3DS games (because they can) so they'll never exceed 1GB.  They've based their business model on a certain price range of cart, which may even be cheaper than a DVD, and so even though this DVD game CAN be ported to the 3DS, they don't want to spend the extra money, so it either doesn't happen or they compromise the port.

I don't think for a portable this is so important but for a console it is.  They make the Wii 2 a cartridge console and third parties will just dick them around like always.  It wouldn't even just be a problem of making sure the cost of the carts was comparible to discs.  Providing the ability to offer cheaper carts with lower capacity is something that will undoubtably be abused.  There is a lot of benefits in being similar to the competition.  Same minimum, same maximum, same price structure - no one can fuck you.  It just would not be worth the effort.

The big advantage to carts is the lack of load times.  Load times matter to Nintendo a lot, but we know that they just are not a big deal to everyone else.  Most first party Cube and Wii games have such smooth and quick load times that they more or less don't have them at all.  Yet on both systems encountering third party games with long load times is common.  We know the hardware is capable of having short load times but third parties don't make use of it.  That's because they know they don't have to.  They know the consumer will put up with it.  They know their game will still be playable, or even be considered a classic.  They would have to push it really hard for people to not buy a game because of load times.  The consumer doesn't really care and the developers don't really care.  So the whole advantage is completely moot.  So if the cost is just a little bit higher, kiss third parties goodbye.  Saving money is worth more than no load times.  If carts allow for cost-cutting methods that discs don't, then they will be abused at the expense of the gamers.

The key to third party support is being conventional.  Being Mr. Oddball has gotten Nintendo jack shit for third party support for almost 15 years straight.

What third party developers are attracted to is unlimited expansion and if Nintendo taps into that sentiment with a storage medium that can accomodate games of all sizes.

There is always the 32 GB SD card, but that would be very expensive.

Except the 3DS won't accept cards that big anyways.

Isn't most of that hi-res graphics (I'd say 720p but someone would inevitably prove me wrong) and 5.1 music, though? If the graphics and sound were down-res'd, that could probably get to 8GB. Especially without the requirements for redundancy that are seen on the disc to reduce load times.

Maybe, but I have my doubts. I personally wouldn't play it anyways since I don't think I would enjoy the game (based on reviews I have read). It would probably take way too much time and effort to make it happen anyways.

Just because 8 GB is the limit now doesn't mean it always will be. Like I pointed out before, the initial limit for DS cards was 128 MB, but now we have games at double and even quadruple that.

There are Mini-dvds which only hold about 1.5gb or something, and those are basically what the GC disc were. But even though they are smaller in both size and capacity they ironically cost more than the full sized ones (at least to the end consumer they do). But why the hell does it matter if the full capacity of a DVD is used or not? I mean, DVDs are basically just a cheap piece of plastic fused with a extremely thin layer of aluminum foil. That's really they are. That's why companies like AOL could notoriously put 20mb worth of their crapware on a 700mb disc and then mail millions of them to everyone and their grandmother. The other 680mb on the disc was completely wasted, but at 10cents a disc did it even matter?

And I think that's how it is with that new Super Mario All Stars game for the Wii. There was probably no need for more than 20mb of space for those old roms to be placed on the DVD. So you have a 4.7gb disc with 99.9% of the space going unused.

I agree. But furthermore, it seems likely to me that the 3DS will have at least one USB port, and with that there is really no limit to storage. Is it out of the question that some games might come on what is essentially a USB flash drive that would plug into the 3DS?

Doing things like that would be pointless, since such drives don't offer any more storage than could be done on a 3DS card and would be more expensive and less convenient.

The max size of DS games was not known (and is still not known), it's just that most DS games were smaller until prices came down (there wasn't a limit). This is explicitly saying that the max size is 8GB. So as of right now, it would not be smart to assume we will ever see 3DS games bigger than that.

It doesn't matter if the full capacity of a DVD is used and that is part of the advantage.  The minimum size (and mini-DVDs don't count since making a Wii, PS3 or X360 game on one is probably not supported) is quite large to begin with.  Most games won't exceed it but if you need to, there are options.  But for all intents and purposes it is pretty much one-size-fits-all with a fixed cost.  Cartridges however offer more price options so you can save money by going with a small cart.  But let's say we've got a multiplatform game that is 2.5 GB on the other consoles.  On the Wii 2 you can go with a 3 GB cart but the 2 GB cart is cheaper to produce.  If we removed the voice acting or took out half the soundtrack or compressed the FMV or whatever we could to cut those extra 500 MB we could use the cheaper cart and save money!

There is no such option with a DVD.  The minimum is so large and so cheap there is no cost-benefit in cutting corners.  And if you use a medium that everyone else uses and is familiar with then you get treated way better on multi-platform releases.

I personally prefer cartridges but would only support Nintendo using them on a console if everyone else was doing the same thing.  Multiplatform releases are the norm these days.  Having a port-friendly console is a good thing, so much so that one should specifically design their system as such.  Let the unique creative ideas go into the EXTRA features that the competition doesn't have.  So you have 99% the same thing... but MORE.  You want it so that you can easily handle the competitor's games but their hardware cannot handle your's.  Until recently the PS360 couldn't do Wii Sports.  That's good.  Oh but the Wii basically couldn't do any of the PS360 games either.  That sucked.  That's no advantage, it makes it a choice for the consumer.

Carts vs. discs will get Nintendo nowhere.  Don't make it an "either or" situation.  Now if the Wii 2 supported both carts and discs then we've got something.  The Wii 2 can then do what the competition does plus more.  Don't make people choose, make it so that it is OBVIOUS that your console is BETTER.

A Proprietary Flash based 3DS cartridge and an SD card are 2 different things.

Your obviously responding to the the assumption that the 3DS card and an SD card are the same, but if the 3DS takes SDHC cards (which we know it will) then it should accept 32GB cards. 64GB cards are a a little different though I think.

That is also correct since 8GB is currently what they are capable of fabricating, but doesn't mean they couldn't meet a higher need should one arise many years down the road (not cost effective at this point).

There isn't a limit of how big a game can be on a hardware level; the limits are imposed by the storage medium, and solid state storage is continually getting cheaper at higher capacity. Nintendo specifically said early on with the DS that cards would go up to 1 gigabit, 128 megabytes, but flash memory got cheaper as time went on and they were able to make bigger cards. I doubt games on the 3DS will ever need more than 8 GB, but there would be nothing stopping them from expanding it if they wanted to.

We know the Wii is capable of handling GC discs, so it shouldn't be a problem if Nintendo or some other company wanted to release a Wii game on that. There's really not much reason for them to do that though, because it would most likely cost more to do it. The only thing I can think of is if they did make Wii games on GC media it would be compact enough to fit inside a DS case. That's something that might be worth pursuing for games that were intended to be played on both systems or whatever.

As for the PS3 and 360, I have no idea but if they are designed to be fully compliant with the DVD/Blu-ray standard then they should be able to support mini-dvd/mini-bluray because that's part of the respective standards. Of course that's movies, but if the drive can physically read it for movies I would think it should be able to do so for games as well (but there might be some issues with read speeds or whatever). But here too there really isn't much point in it, unless it were for promotional purposes or to reduce the size of cases for the sake of shelf space or whatever. I would imagine Mini-bluray would be capable of handling most PS3 games, since the size of blu-ray is overkill for the most part.

Offtopic, but I think that was something Sega dabbled with a bit with the Saturn. There was a slot on the top near the back which was like the genesis or snes cart slot, but as far as I know this was never actually used for games (probably just for a modem or some other obscure peripherals). Then there was the experimental Neptune console which was supposed to have been the Genesis, 32x, and Sega CD all bundled together into one unified and enhanced product, but that never got off the ground.

But a console supporting two proprietary formats might be a bad idea. For one thing, its going to add to the manufacturing cost of the system. The other issue is the two formats are going to be competing with each other over space on store shelves and so forth. You're right that there are some benefits to it as well, but its open to debate whether the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages.

That slot was used for portable storage cards that could save stuff like game saves and high scores. It could also be used for the Sega NetLink (a 28.8 Kb modem), and it could be used to expand RAM for games (for example, X-Men vs. Street Fighter used a 4MB cart).

The Neptune was only going to be Genesis and 32X, not CD.

Well I don't think it's like an awesome idea or anything.  But if you're going to do carts, I think that might be the safer approach.  Then devs can pick what is important to them.  I don't think they would fight for shelf space as they would all be Wii 2 games and I'm figuring a Wii 2 game is either a cart or a disc.  There would be no point in being available in both.  But it would increase the cost of the system and I think the benefits are practically non-existent.  What would happen is that Nintendo would be all cart-crazy and probably everyone else would just use discs.  This is my "save Nintendo from themselves" solution where Nintendo's self-serving goof-ass method and the normal conventional method are both available and Nintendo can be crazy without screwing everything up.

I figure that the 3DS is going to break the Nintendo console life cycle trend of five years and have a ten year life cycle of its own. If so, I could eventually see the 3DS reaching the and eventually succeeding the 8 GB storage limit as its games evolve to look ever more like PS3 and 360 games.

Even if they looked like 360 games they most likely wouldn't need more than 8 GB. Very few 360 games take up more than that, and 3DS games would be smaller even at the same visual quality because the smaller size and lower resolution of it's screens wouldn't need as much detail in textures to achieve that.

In terms of discs vs. carts/cards, this is a much different scenario than it was 14 years ago when Nintendo got rofl-stomped by Sony for sticking with cartridges. Storage capacity between the two is more or less even and the prices discrepancy is far narrower. At this point, I still think cards are a better storage solution. DLC could theorhetically be downloaded directly to a game card and transferable to internal memory. That's something you absolutely cannot do with discs (or at least the read-only discs found on consoles) and certainly there are advantages to that (i.e. take your DLC enhanced game to your cheap friend's house). Of course, to prevent rampant piracy, you'd likely have to tie downloads to an account, but that's pretty much something Nintendo should have had in place for years.

Anyway, as for 3DS, I presume most games will be under 4GB. If a game requires more, it's probably loaded with CGI/animated cutscenes.

Nintendo already had one of those. You may have heard of it. It's called a Gameboy something or other.

Or made by Hideo Kojima. I remember him actually complaining about the 50GB size of Blu-ray Disc not being enough (I think it was because he didn't bother compressing any of the audio or video in the game, and uncompressed video takes up a lot of space).

I remember that too and I'm pretty sure it was the audio as well. There was a lot of it in MGS4. Still, the noise about a whole Blu-Ray not being enough was clearly BS considering he followed Guns of the Patriots with Peace Walker on a paltry 1.8GB UMD. How many people really had all of the equipment need to really take advantage of the fancy-pants audio in MGS4? The game played just as well without it. I guess it's nice to have the option but that's just it, it's optional. I'm curious to see if the 360 version of Metal Gear Rising comes out on 37 DVDs...

I could see Final Fantasy 15 coming out on the 3DS with a 8 to 16 GB card.

One of the nice advantages of carts that I remember from the SNES era was that it allowed Nintendo to put chips within the carts that would actually beef up the specs of the SNES so that in its final years even though the games were $70 or so, the graphics were amazing and easily competitive with that of the 32-bit systems. Look at the wonderful graphics of Super Mario RPG, DKC, Killer Instinct, etc. That was very impressive stuff made possible because of chips that were bundled in with the carts themselves. Star Fox was another example, which had some other special chip in it that made it possible to be the 3D polygon game that it was. With the SNES carts Nintendo seemed to be able to do what the 32x did to the Genesis, except in Nintendo's case the 32X was actually built into the carts themselves meaning no peripheral was necessary, because each game has its own peripheral integrated into it.

Obviously something like that couldn't be possible with optical media.

I don't think that's possible with DS-style cards either.

I wouldn't hide my breath if I were you. The mainline Final Fantasy games go to the system Square Enix thinks would be best to show off with graphics and audio, which means a handheld will have almost no shot at getting a current FF game (ports of older games are different, maybe the 3DS could get ports of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII). Not to mention the very slim chance the 3DS could even support cards larger than 8GB.

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r259/theultimateperm/bargraph1.gif
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r259/theultimateperm/bargraph2.gif

some size projection prediction i made a couple months ago

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?