My thoughts on the 3DS XL

Nintendo, for the lack of a better phrase, confuses me.  The truth of Nintendo's handheld dominance over the last 20 years is nothing to blow my nose at, but this year has seen some very strange choices from the Big N, and I can't say that I completely understand them all.  Wii U side (I'm sure I'll rip into that at some point soon), Nintendo decided to save their redesigned 3DS unit until a few weeks after the biggest gaming show on the planet.  I question that choice in itself, especially since it was announced that same week in Japanese newspapers that Nintendo was going to show it pretty soon, and I would think the more eyes seeing it the better, but what do I know?  

So let's first ask the question, did the relatively young 3DS need a redesign?  Yes.  The battery life is pretty bad on the old one, and while the design looks really cool (I really do love the metallic finish), the clam shell/wide screen design can lead to some really weird looking scratches on your screen.  Furthermore, the 3DS is a mere babe when it comes to it's console lifespan.  I always find it amusing when people throw a fit when Nintendo does something like this.  The original Game Boy had two separate hardware skus (original and Game Boy Pocket), the Game Boy Color had one, the Game Boy Advanced had three separate skus (Game Boy Advanced, Game Boy Advanced SP, and GBA Micro), and the Nintendo DS had an astounding four different hardware launches (DS, DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL).  We knew this was going to happen and some point, and while the first six months of the 3DS were so bad that Nintendo had to apologize for it and gift twenty free games to those of us who ponied up the 250 bucks to buy one, which I have my own theories as to why the console didn't sell that well outside of the initial launch, and yes, price was part of it.  

Now the question comes up, do I like the redesign?  Honestly, the answer is no.  Nintendo missed the mark on something extremely important in their redesign, and while I do want to get one for myself, because I really do adore larger screens on handhelds, they really seem to miss the boat when it comes to listening to their customers.  Sure, in retrospect they listen (I've never seen a company have to apologize for a price drop before, and gift free software because of it.), but pro-actively they would rather tell you what you want, rather than listen to you and address those concerns.  If you go back through history and look at all the handhelds launches that Nintendo has had, they always seem to leave something out that everyone seems to want.  This time around they managed to address a problem they knew they were going to have right out of the chute, but forgot something extremely major, especially when compared to their competitor.  The thing they got right was the battery life.  The 3DSXL will effectively double the amount of playtime you were getting out of your original 3DS.  They completely missed on adding a second analog stick, which I would think would be one of the most important additions you could make.  

I can hear everyone now griping about how Sony had four separate skus for the original PSP as well, and managed to make the same mistake. Yes, you would be correct.  However, the major different between the two to me is that the original PSP had no accessories or the like that allowed another control stick to be added on, so zero percent of the games actually used a second nub.  Sony went on record to say that a second stick would have been a huge drain on their battery, and while I don't know if I 100% buy that, I will say the addition of a second stick in later models would have segregated the audience, and there would be PSP games out there that wouldn't run on all PSPs, which I don't think Sony really wanted to do.  The difference here is that the 3DS does have a second analog stick attachment, the Circle Pad Pro.  Plus, there are games that actually use the secondary pad, such as Metal Gear and Resident Evil.  So the lack of this option so young into this console's life cycle probably means Nintendo doesn't view the secondary stick as a big deal.  If they include a secondary stick with their next version of the 3DS, after the XL, they will run into the same problem Sony could have faced with the later versions of the PSP, and segregate their audience.  

The Vita hasn't exactly set the world on fire yet, though, so perhaps Nintendo does not believe that they will lose much market share to Sony due to Sony's poor efforts with their newest handheld.  There are lots of ways to look at this, and as of right now, I'd guess Nintendo doesn't see a threat from Sony at this point.