3DS Circle Pad Pro features spacious interiors, little natural light

@spekkio
It was announced as a GameStop exclusive... so if it pops up on Amazon, likely due to a reseller at considerate markup.

@spekkio Both are right. It's up to the individual here and not the Oxford Style Manual of determining the usage and meaning. Ambiguity at its best.

@Taro

It has an IR sensor and a stick with a really god build quality. The circle pad alone goes for about $7 on DX.

Give it a second stick and it's no more basic than any other wireless gamepad.

@ColorblindMonk
You welcome this as a hand grip yet prefer your 3DS with a single circle pad? FAIL. Playing thee-dimensional video games without a second analog stick to manipulate the camera in the 2010's is beyond moronic.

@Ericss
I guess you haven't been playing DS or PSP then. Those did well.

@Mmmmz
Nintendo's absolute ignorance over not putting a battery in that thing is at their heart of their current problems.

@Mmmmz
"If they redesign the 3DS to actually include a second analog, something I sincerely doubt they will likely do"

Are you kidding me? You really think that Nintendo would be stupid enough to exclude the second analog from the next 3DS redesign, forcing players to keep buying this already rather unpopular addon?

Actually, don't answer that question.

@BPMOmega XBL PSN Steam

Nope, but after all the good press that has come Nintendo's way recently, they need something to bash them with.

@BPMOmega XBL PSN Steam

No the real surprise is that with all that empty space they didn't toss in an external battery, I mean they do seem to be tackling design flaws why not go for the most glaring.

@(Unverified) The Steel Battalion controller is the contiguous United States.

@(Unverified)

And the DDR pad is the Pacific Ocean.

@Oddgirl

Yeah Steel Battalion did have the market cornered on shamelessly awesome, shamelessly unwieldy controllers :)

@(Unverified)

What about the Atari Jaguar? That would be the tri-state area.

@Raquor

That also would have been a highly acceptable use for the space barring an external battery.

@Raquor

Yeah, I could probably go to an electronics store and cobble up something...or just take the insides and build/mold a smaller housing.

So, maybe I'll just mod it.

@Space Cobra NEON BIG BIRD

@SpikePoint

Simplest way would be to include two libraries in the game code that would after the determination of the hardware revision either accept additional slide controls from the IR port or from a native slide control.

So If there is another 3DS in the works odds are there are bits of code in existing games (that use the slide control) that would substantiate its inevitability.

@SpikePoint

They could very easily change everything inside the 3DS for the 3DS Lite and still have full compatibility with the old 3DS. No game on the 3DS "talks" directly to the components of the system. They are all abstracted through the underlying framework of the Nintendo 3DS system. They poll system for inputs from various components like the gyroscope, the camera, the face buttons, the touch screen and the system gives them normalised data.

This way, they could easily change supplier for the 3DS' screens or various components and developers need not worry about support as the system itself will handle any variations in hardware, not high-level software.

But that's not all that relevant. It's a simple fix to include a second circle pad, you know, once they solve the physical limitations of the 3DS, namely the fact there was no room in the original 3DS for the circle pad. Not without increasing the bulk of the device. It's like the Wii Motion Plus. Started off as an add-on for normal controllers, then got integrated years down the line. The technology inside the Wii Remote got smaller to the point where they could add in that extra functionality without sacrificing form. Same will happen to the 3DS, eventually. All they need to do is "trick" (if that's the right word) the 3DS into thinking the circle pad is always present and feed the abstracted Circle Pad Pro data to the system. Old games think the Circle Pad Pro is present but really it's just integrated into the system.

tl;dr: It's a lot simpler than you think to implement the new circle pad. It's just a matter of IF Nintendo wants to fragment their new handheld in such a significant way so soon into the life-span of a 5-6 year console and perhaps more importantly WHEN Nintendo will have the technology in place to do so (smaller parts). I don't see it happening next year, but the year after...

P.S. I am very annoyed you have to supply this thing AAA batteries, no rechargeable battery, just to power ITSELF, let alone the 3DS system itself. What is Nintendo doing? $20 for a lump of plastic so hilariously empty it reminds me of the Chintendo Vii teardown. ( http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/16492 ) Funny how things come around.

@SSUK
Agree it will be no problem making 3DS Lite to include this. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion it will happen - this thing is basically the Capcom Pad Pro, it's pretty clear Nintendo wouldn't have done it on their own - but yes if it does, no technical problem.

But, if the 480 hours of play time claim is correct, then you don't have to 'supply it with AAA batteries'. You put in one battery (do they ship with one?) and that is it - you're done. It then lasts the entire life of the device.

(Seriously, 480 hours? That's 24 full-length games, and most 3DS games probably won't use it.)

tl; dr.
I got up to the point where you managed to make polling and getting data from RAM sound incredibly technical, then have up.