3D on 3DS: Fad?

How easy will it be to lose your stylus? Too easy.

I'm not the only one who finds the 3D on the 3DS an interesting gimmick, but not something for the long term. Brian at Kotaku has turned off the 3D after a week and is just using the 3DS as a standard handheld... albeit one with crappy battery life and expensive software.

My experience with the 3DS was that the 3D effect gave me a headache after 15 minutes of use. Plus, trying to move the 3DS in order to get the right angle on a target (using the position sensors) and at the same time trying to keep your eyes in the limited sweet spot for 3D was a losing proposition. Even without that, the fact that you have to switch your focus between the 3D screen and the touch screen means your eyes and brain will get tired swiftly.

So maybe it's a good thing the battery doesn't last too long, because then you'd get a headache for sure. Hey! Crappy battery life is a feature, not a bug! Why didn't I see it before?

Nintendo is going to be hurting if the 3DS is not the huge success they are banking on. The Wii is tanking, and although they may have a successor in the wings it's not going to make a big fiscal impact this year (or else they'd have already announced it).

The real test is to see how 3DS sales look in the summertime, once the initial bloom has worn off. And when the NGP gets closer... and the iPhone 5 is announced... the competitive picture will be heating up. Let's not forget the Experia Play (the Playstation Phone), the iPad 2, and 3D smartphones... there are many ways to compete for gaming time and hardware dollars. Nintendo's got the biggest challenge on their hands that they've ever faced, and yet they still seem to be dismissing the difficulty level. This does not fill me with confidence for their chances in the coming battles for handheld entertainment.