3DS said to feature 3D control stick, Sharp LCD screens; will be playable at E3

by Ben Gilbert on Mar 23rd 2010 12:27PM

As if news of a new handheld device coming from Nintendo in the middle of the night wasn't enough, Engadget today spotted two reports out of Japanese newspapers Asahi and Nikkei detailing the 3DS' known hardware so far. Asahi claims that the handheld's 3D output (remember, sans silly glasses) comes via a "parallax barrier LCD" from Sharp, while Nikkei backs this up and adds that the device's screens will measure roughly four inches diagonally across (each).

Nikkei also claims the device will feature a "3D control stick," though this could presumably be an analog control stick, as well as rumble support and an upped battery life / speedier Wi-Fi. And while we heard last night that the device would arrive on retail shelves sometime in "Fiscal 2010" (before the end of calendar year March 2011), the report says it will arrive during the "second half of [calendar] 2010," owing the new handheld's reveal to slowing DS sales. In speaking with a representative from Nintendo of America, the New York Times confirmed that we'll get our first hands-on with the 3DS at E3 2010, so we'll get our chance to find out exactly what that hardware contains soon enough.

Source 1 - Asahi
Source 2 - Nikkei
Source 3 - The New York Times

[Via Engadget]

Tags: 3d, 3d-control-stick, 3ds, DS, Nintendo, Nintendo-3DS, parallax-barrier-lcd, sharp, touchscreen

Reader Comments (93)

I need to change my pants. Right now.

Yeah, thank god that wasn't semen, like so many other people would have "spit out". Your not like those other guys are you? : )

I am heartbroken. :( Just right after I bought my DSi.

It's not a new DS, it's brand new hardware. This isn't a mere spec bump, and your DSi will still see years of support.

He recently bought a new DS, and they've just announced a new handheld. Of course he's gonna be pissed. What's with you going around telling everyone this is new hardware, that doesn't count for shit if you've just bought a DSi.

New Generation of Pokemon + New 3D Ds = Virtual Insanity

You mean, they are actually going to have to make 3D models of Pokemon instead of recycling the old sprites?

What an odd way to make an announcement of hardware. I guess Nintendo's base doesn't really pay attention to e3. At this point its hard to say that they wont have success with anything they put out, even though it doesn't appeal to me. I think that the "3d control stick" is a much easier way of explaining an Analog stick to a Parent.

Hmmm, parallax barrier technology. It looks like Nintendo is riding the low-res train into the future. This means that unless they use an LCD with insanely small pixels (which would move Nintendo out of their low-price comfort zone), each eye will only see half resolution in the horizontal plane. The other downside to this technology is that it has low margin of error for head positioning (must be at a certain distance from the screen, directly in front), since the slits have a narrower viewing angle (due to the close positioning of the human eyes) in order to maintain their stereoscopic qualities.

I hope this works better than I'm currently thinking (perhaps they've added new tech to the current, such as shiftable slits, etc.), because handheld 3D would be awesome. Granted, at first I was imagining playing with something like R2D2's holographic projector, but I'm hoping at least that this would give me a headache.

Well, I did just find a patent application for an adjustable parallax barrier, but it relies on eye tracking in order to follow the user in horizontal and vertical space. I'm guessing a camera will be included a la the DSi, and probably at high enough resolution for eye tracking, so it seems possible. Of course that then raises the question of what overhead this will put on the processor (man, this question is getting old...). And who knows how much an adjustable micro-slit barrier is going to cost.

Well... there has been rumors since months ago about Tegra 2 to be included in the new DS.

For an easier explanation, the parallax barrier is a collection of small slits that direct light either left or right. Therefore each eye will only see half of the pixels, and their images will cross over to the other eye. If both eye receive versions of the same image with slight differences to represent different lines of site, your brain will correlate these images into a 3D representation of the object. For instance, if MMM is the image, and V are you eyes, your brain will interpret a 3D representation of an image at point X.

MMM
.\..../.
..\../..
...X...
../..\..
./....\.
V....V

However, if your eyes aren't at the correct distance, the images received by each eye will not correlate, meaning the 3D effect will be lost.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/190937/3d_imageswithout_glasses.html

That can project to 64 positions.

It will work fine because its a personal device, you hold it directly in front of you. Also the resolution standards are already set pretty low with the DS being 256x192 pixels. If they get a screen with double the horizontal resolution and add a parallax barrier, you'll see the same resolution as the DS per eye.

@Blight

That video is pretty sweet. That 64 position thing is promising, but they say nothing about pixel size of the monitor, backlight intensity, or image quality (which account for some of the hypothetical explanations I've come up with). I guess tiny prisms could also be at work, which would be badass. Still 64 positions implies some kind of sweet spot(s) instead of fluid movement like eyetracking would allow.

@Raffi:

But I don't want to be constrained to current DSi resolution! It bugs me already, and will be even more noticeable in 1-2 years as every other device gets increasingly crisper (though in full disclosure I have no idea what jagginess looks like in 3D).

And I play my DSi in a variety of position (lying in bed with just head elevated, sitting on can, etc.)? The DSi is in a very different relative position, orientation, and distance to my eyes in each of these instances. It would be a pain if I there's some preset thing I have to do to use it. Additionally, some people are bigger than others (i.e. kids vs adults), with differences in arm length, yet it must work for all. I guess I'm mostly just curious as to how this will work. I'm pretty intrigued by the concept.

Aristokrat

The problem is, you are already assuming that the 3DS will have the same resolution as the current DS/DSi... at least wait until E3...

It's backwards compatible with the DS, that's known. So it sets limits on what it will look like and do since the DS games depend on it. Screens will be the same vertical layout, at least one has to be a touchscreen. There will be a mem card reader and a microphone. And the resolution is likely to be the same, unless its going to upscale the DS game output, and I seriously doubt Nintendo would do a complex implementation like that. They're going to do this dead simple and cheap.

Raffi...

The PSP is backwards compatible with the PS1, and the PS3 is backwards compatible with PS1 and PS2 games... and the 360 is BC with some Xbox games... and still, the hardware is a lot more powerful that the original systems.

Fernando:

I'm not expecting this thing to be DSi resolution, I was just replying to Raffi's comment. Though, higher resolution means smaller pixels means higher cost parallax barrier.

You want a headache, pick up that keyboard and whack yourself 100 times with it. At least you'll get it for free, and you can get it today, not at some future post E3 release date.

as of right now I am in no way interested in the idea of this product, but I don't have much to go on yet.

Wow I'm glad I've been holding out on buying any kind of DS. I think this is going to be the one. OMG it's so gonna happen

I got my hands on a prototype, and it's awesome.

There are still going to be two screens, but you'll only see one with each eye. You just put your eyes onto an extension that separate them, it looks like goggles.

The only catch is that the only color it can show is red.

But it's the future!!!!!

Now, where did I put my migraine pills from the future...

I think I've seen what you're talking about... :o

Boy, virtually no one would buy that.

Wonder if I should get this, or wait for a 3DS XL? Damn, I was finally going to upgrade to an XL, and now they come out with new hardware. Backward compatible new hardware at that...... Damn you Nintendo!!!

I think you mean a Nintendo 3DSi XL lite.

For an easier explanation, the parallax barrier is a collection of small slits that direct light either left or right. Therefore each eye will only see half of the pixels, and their images will cross over to the other eye. If both eye receive versions of the same image with slight differences to represent different lines of site, your brain will correlate these images into a 3D representation of the object. For instance, if MMM is the image, and V are you eyes, your brain will interpret a 3D representation of an image at point X.

MMM
\ /
\ /
X
/ \
/ \
V V

However, if your eyes aren't at the correct distance, the images received by each eye will not correlate, meaning the 3D effect will be lost.

Argh, reply and ASCII fail.

The same tech as those old 3-D baseball cards?

So is this like a hangeld virtual boy?

2 pages of comments and not a single one blued, as of writing? Easy, guys...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rK3s_BP9kE

Whew! My birthday's in a couple weeks and I was damn close to asking for the DSi XL for it. Now I can waste my families money on something else and wait for this next DS, because it sounds much more entertaining than a upgrade to my DS phat.

this will kick ass. i think this system is going to be marketed for the hardcore gamers. with this, I bet sony is getting worried (and will make a better product because of this)

at first i thought this was the 3DO LOL

As of right now, I cannot possibly envision how a proper analog stick would be feasible or comfortable on a handheld gaming device. I can't wait for Nintendo to prove me wrong.

What if the 3d control stick is a stylus like the ones on wacom tablets, where it can detect where it is even if its not touching the screen.

Your move, Sony.

lol, yea, their only move: Copy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygRLBZNZr40#t=0m36s

People often forgot that Nintendo released many hardware revision of their portable system.

Each system have 4 versions, well if you count the upgrade GBA SP with a better and improve back-light.

Even PSP have 4 versions of their system, each one adding and improving from the previous one...but one can argue about the PSP Go which is probably like i say in another post, to test the viability of the PSP phone.

DSi XL is the fourth revision of the successful DS with already 125 millions hardware sold worldwide.

Also it make sense for portable device to get revision. Only the Gamegear didn't see a 2nd revision, like many other, it didn't last long against the GB to see another revision.

On one hand, Nintendo rarely upgrade or release a revision for their console version. NES and SNES got one upgrade really late into the system light but hardly talk about.

3D Stick? Does it means it could also be pulled and pushed as it is already in analogue way?

Previous 50 Comments

3DS said to feature 3D control stick, Sharp LCD screens; will be playable at E3

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