In the wee hours of the morning, Nintendo very quietly announced the successor to its wildly successful line of Nintendo DS gaming handhelds: the Nintendo 3DS.
Following Nintendo’s recent trend of embracing bold and unconventional gaming hardware (e.g. the Nintendo Wii’s motion-sensing controls, or the original Nintendo DS’s dual screen / touchscreen approach) the 3DS, as its name implies, promises to bring full 3D without glasses to handheld gaming.
What’s of interest to the announcement for Apple fans, though, is the timing. Like many tech companies, Nintendo tends to announce its biggest products at industry events. The Nintendo DS is such a wild success for the company, they’d be sure to announce their follow-up handheld at a major expo, such as May’s E3 Expo.
Instead, though, Nintendo chose to announce the 3DS with a terse press release and a promise to give more details in May…. following right on the heels of a report that shows that the iPhone and iPod Touch have claimed 19% of the handheld gaming market from Nintendo, thanks to the App Store, in only 21 months.
This announcement has all the hallmarks of a hastily made pacifying gesture to Nintendo investors alarmed by Apple’s unexpected success in the handheld gaming market: “Don’t worry, we’re not resting on our laurels, we’ve got something new up our sleeves.”
I’m eagerly anticipating E3’s 3DS announcements. My guess is that the App Store has changed the mobile gaming development scene forever, and an integral part to Nintendo’s own strategy will be to extend their WiiWare downloadable games service to the 3DS while opening it up to public submissions.
