LAS VEGAS—Nintendo's 3DS 3D portable gaming system may not be a dud, afterall. I finally got a chance to play a couple of games on it during a meeting with Nintendo's North America President Reggie Fils-Aime at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The glasses-free 3D effect and feeling of immersion on the relatively small screen is fairly remarkable.
Nintendo is not actually at CES. Instead, the gaming company held a series of private meetings at the adjacent Las Vegas Hilton. There, Nintendo gave select journalists their first extended, up-close look and hands-on time with the gaming company's critical 2011 product release. The last time I saw the 3DS was at E3 in Los Angles. I had approximately one precious minute with the device where I got to view some static, 3D gaming images and to try adjusting the 3D slide for my eyes. That was it, and I was not impressed.
This time, Nintendo walked us through all the features of 3DS (see the video below) and then handed it to me for some extended play time. They would not allow me to video tape the actual game play, but what follows is a description of my experience and some of what I learned about the device. You still, by the way, need to use the small slider on the side of the screen to adjust the 3D effect for your eyes. You can even use it to turn off the 3D effect altogether. I wasn't a fan of this concept when I saw it last year, but this time, I did manage to quickly find my 3D sweet spot.
The Nintendo 3DS has three cameras, one on the face and two on the back. The rear cameras are for 3D photography (you can't take the images off the 3DS, but can view them on the 3D screen or use them to create your own 3D Mii) and augmented reality. Augmented reality combines live images with overlaid 3D imagery and then manipulates the real image elements to create a live, 3D, interactive experience.
To demonstrate, Nintendo execs placed a yellow card on a white table before me. They then had me focus the 3DS camera on the card. On-screen, the 3DS told me how many inches away I needed to be from the table for optimal effect (it actually measured the distance in real-time). Once it had targeted the card, I hit the A key and suddenly the card and some of the surrounding table transformed into a box—sections of the table appeared to fold up to create the 3D image. I could get up and walk about the virtual box to see it from all sides. The top of the box opened and a dragon appeared. Again, I could move around the dragon and aim by tilting the 3DS left, right and up and down and shoot targets around its body. 3DS knows its position in space thanks to a combination of gyroscopes and accelerometers, similar to what you'd find in the Wii Remote Plus. Eventually, I had to defeat the dragon by shooting red portions of its body. The box then exploded, leaving a virtual hole in the table. Next, the hole disappeared and the card reappeared on the table. However, the table surface had become as flexible as a trampoline, with the top flexing up and down.
To view these 3D images effectively, I did have to keep my head centered over the 3DS. If I shifted my eyes or moved my head too quickly, the screen shifted somewhat jarringly. Still, the overall effect on the 3DS was impressive. Fils-Aime said that the 3D technology is similar to other glasses-free implementations we've seen at CES. For those HDTV's, the effect works best if you stand right in front of the screen.
Next, I played a virtual flying game. Again, the 3D screen imagery gave the impression of flying over and through objects. This game didn't use the gyroscope or accelerometer, so I navigated through the flying maze with the new circular D-pad.
You can also watch 3D movies on the 3DS, and Nintendo showed us a trailer for How to Train Your Dragon. While Nintendo's Fils-Aime wouldn't tell me the exact screen resolution, he did say this is the highest resolution of any Nintendo DS ever produced. The images I saw bore that out.
During the interview, I asked Fils-Aime about the recent controversy over Nintendo's recommendation that children under 6 shouldn't use the gaming system's 3D features. He explained that similar warning appears on all other 3D devices and that the vision manipulation that occurs when creating a 3D image could affect young childrens' still-developing eyes. Nintendo recommends, Fils-Aime added, that even older children only use the 3D imagery for 30 minutes at a time. As I was watching the movie trailer, I realized the one small flaw in this recommendation: "What should people do if their child is watching a 3D movie? As I recall, this one is an hour and a half." Fils-Aime just stared at me for a moment then answered that parents need to use their best judgment and if they see their children looking like they're getting eye fatigue, they should recommend a break.
Other Nintendo 3DS featuresI saw up close include an SD card slot, a telescoping stylus, and some sort of infrared panel that Nintendo wouldn't explain.
Nintendo hasn't announced final pricing or an exact ship date beyond (March); however, the company is planning a major product event later this month, where they'll go into further detail on all the Nintendo 3DS features. When I joked and asked if it's also a phone, Fils-Aime laughed and promised, "it is not a phone."