Nintendo’s 3DS isn’t selling quite as well as they had hoped, but as usual, the company has some tricks up their sleeve.
Around the time the handheld was announced, the 3D phase was still going strong, or at least somewhat strong. The movie Avatar did much to bring 3D entertainment back into the spotlight, but there’s been little else to really stand out the way that the hit film did. Sony added 3D support to the Playstation 3 and many electronics manufacturers began selling 3D televisions to consumers, but to little avail. It’s hard to pinpoint one exact reason why 3D isn’t catching on as hoped, so Nintendo is rumored to be transforming the handheld 3DS into something less, well, 3D.
The Big N isn’t about to just give up on their latest handheld, but sites like 01Net claim that Nintendo would like to tone down the 3D aspect and use the hardware to focus on the 2-dimensional games they’ve excelled at for so many years. The other big rumor, however, is that the 3DS will soon sport a second analog stick. It’s unsure exactly how something like this will work, but there is some room beneath the right-hand buttons, and supposedly the stick will snap on the side of the device. Whether it will need to be detached each time or if the handheld can be closed while it’s attached is yet to be disclosed, and the same goes for just how the analog stick will plug into the hardware. Personally, I think it might end up having an awkward feel, with the left analog located further up and the potential right analog stick being positioned on the lower corner of the device. Of course, it’s still in rumor phase, so we can’t be entirely sure what Nintendo has planned, if anything.
They’ve already lowered the price of the 3DS recently, but if gamers don’t want it, that won’t make too much of a difference. The added Netflix support is a nice bonus for any portal device, though. Given that Sony has the PS Vita coming out in the near future, it would seem that Nintendo could very well make some drastic changes in order to stay competitive.
