Nintendo’s Konno on 3DS: ‘You can take this as the final shape’
What you see is what you get
Wired’s Game Life blog has published an interview with 3DS platform producer Hideki Konno, who answered a number of questions about the platform’s 3D effects,
Konno describes the console’s 3D technology as “quite old”, and explains the mind bending effect in a deceptively simple way, saying “if we simply prepare a picture for the left eye, and a picture for the right eye, and the eyes each see a separate picture, it looks 3-D.”
Nintendo has been toying with 3D for some time, starting from the NES era. We saw it in person with the ill-fated Virtual Boy, but there’s been some tests behind the curtain with Game Cube and Luigi’s Mansion. Costs were too high back then, but with prices down and a greater public interest in 3D, Nintendo knew this was the right time to go all out.
Nintendo is also confident that the same glasses-free technology can be used in bigger screens, like the DSi XL, and even a television. Don’t expect that any time soon, though. Konno says, “besides the cost issue, consumers would have to be in one very specific position to watch the TV or the 3D will be completely gone.”
Other topics of note include digital games (“there should be downloadable content for this platform”) and how the 3DS is every bit as sensitive as the Wii Motion Plus (“the same type of motion sensing is possible”).
Despite information to the contrary earlier this year, Konno says that, unlike the Nintendo DS’s ugly prototype debut at E3 2004, the 3DS won’t be changing before launch. “You can take this as the final shape,” says Konno.
