(This article is *not* hating on the NIntendo 3DS. This article is about shining the light on its shortcomings. Endless praise never did anyone any good!)

There are a lot of things about the Nintendo 3DS that will suck. I think the 3DS will be a great device in general (why else would I have started this site?) but I’ve been burned by high expectations before and don’t want that to happen again. But if we examine *why* the Nintendo 3DS sucks, perhaps we can keep our unreasonably over-blown illusions about its brilliance under control.

It starts with the games. There’s a lot of good titles announced for the 3DS already, but it’s not all sunshine and lollipops as people (including myself at times) would have you believe.

Remakes and ports are, of course, the primary fodder during the launch period. It’s always a risk for developers to create gams for new platforms, meaning most will err on the side of caution and simply re-release already successful titles.

This is not a new phenomenon, but it makes me wonder: **what if all developers have to do is 3D-ify their old creations to get sales?** The casual market isn’t as discerning as the core market and I worry that the ailment of remake and port-itis could extended far beyond a reasonable time frame.

It doesn’t help that Kid Icarus: Uprising [may not be a launch title](http://nintendo3dsblog.com/kid-icarus-uprising-details-paper-mario-3ds-screens-and-luigis-mansion-sequel) and even the Ocarina of Time remake is [only in the planning stages](http://nintendo3dsblog.com/ocarina-of-time-3ds-is-only-in-the-planning-stages). What appeared to be the holy grail of launch line-ups could be far more anaemic than we’d anticipated.

But that’s not the worst of it. Shovel-ware has always been a huge problem in the game industry, but seemingly the most prevalent on Nintendo hardware and it’s back with a vengeance. And, as I discussed in [Episode #32](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=938XN0mfMrI), it does a lot more than merely steal your hard-earned money.

The success of shovel-ware lies in marketing. Naïve children and unassuming parents are swayed by the fancy graphics and exaggerated features that plaster the box. This is where soul-less developers will gladly swoop in and cause a ruckus in the form of low-quality games.

Think about this for a second. **What could be more attractive to this unfortunately uninformed audience than claims of 3D effects that cause objects to fly out at you?** It’s a great selling point, but most people will wrongly assume this will be an enjoyable implementation of 3D effects. But, as Masahario Sakurai – the game designer behind Kid Icarus: Uprising – points out:

> …when you have a lot of objects flying towards the user I find that it’s more likely to cause eye strain so during development I’m using objects moving away from the user which doesn’t have that effect. ([Source](http://nintendo3dsblog.com/masahiro-sakurai-on-how-to-avoid-eye-strain-with-the-3ds))

So yeah, the pop-out style of 3D leads to headaches and eye fatigue, while a sense of depth and volume (like you would’ve seen in *Avatar*) is no where near as painful. Of course, the latter doesn’t sell as well.

What this all means though is that people who hand over their cash for sholel-ware won’t only be paying $30 for a lousy game, **they’ll be paying $30 for a lousy game that causes physical pain**. It’s this type of bad karma that could slice and dice the amount of games parents choose to buy for their children (and Nintendo consoles aren’t exactly known for their stunning attach-rates at the moment either).

Taking a broader view at the underlying technologies available on the 3DS reveals deficiencies that will be passed on to us. Leading the pack in this regard is the bittersweet mistress of choice.

Choice is a [killer of creativity](http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch03_Embrace_Constraints.php) and yet developers have a huge laundry list of choices and decisions to make when creating games for the 3DS. Do we include motion controls? How should we use the 3D effect? What should the touch screen be used for? And these are very high-level choices too; when you dig down, each path reveals hundreds of new decisions that need to be made.

This lack of constraint during the development process will lead to game designers making poor judgment calls including:

* Supporting *all* of the 3DS’s features, even if the support is poorly executed or unnecessary.
* Taking the gimmicky approach such as having 3D objects flying out at you. This ties back in with the “looks good on the box” syndrome present with shovel-ware.
* Delaying game released to the point of irrelevance or releasing products in an unfinished state because of the inability to prioritise and juggle the various forks during development.

Not every developer will face these issues – as a whole they are quite adaptable to new technologies, but I still get the sense of the 3DS’s gift being its curse. Sure, it can do a lot and is really powerful, but **will developers be able to handle that responsibility?** Many can’t even master the touch screen controls on the Nintendo DS – are they ready for a whole new bucket-load of game design rabbit holes?

Perhaps these arguments are unfair though. They do focus on actions not completely under Nintendo’s control after all. That being the case, lets cherry pick what could be the Nintendo 3DS’s most glaring weakness that Nintendo is solely responsible for: online multiplayer gaming.

I see-saw back and forth between optimism and apathy when thinking about Nintendo’s internet-centric future. With that in mind, I’ll kick off with some pessimistic predictions and perhaps move towards a few brighter outlooks.

At a very high-level I predict that Nintendo will:

* Choose to keep the friend codes system.
* Disappoint us with their “innovation” (and then try to justify it)
* Expect developers to handle multiplayer gaming relatively independently (rather than supporting them with an integrated system).

Like I said, my faith in Nintendo’s online plans waivers to and fro. On one hand we’ve got Reggie Fils-Aime, the President of Nintendo of America saying there’ll be ["significant" changes in this space](http://nintendo3dsblog.com/significant-changes-coming-to-nintendos-online-system-with-the-launch-of-the-3ds), but that’s coming from the fella who tried (and failed) to convince E3 attendees a few years back that trading Pokémon over Wi-Fi connections was an adequate substitute for the lack of an Xbox Live-like system. I’m wary of giving Reggie – or anyone at Nintendo for that matter – the benefit of the doubt in this situation.

Is there hope? Sure, there’s always hope. The team at Nintendo *do* seem especially keen to correct their shortcomings this generation, but it may just be too little too late.

I don’t want to dash your dreams of the Nintendo 3DS being awesome. I do think it will be fantastic, but it will undoubtably face its own set of struggles that I think are better to blow out into the open before our expectations sore past any possible reality.

What do you think? **What aspects of the Nintendo 3DS will suck?**