Tom Mc Shea proposes answers to the myriad questions that are swirling around Nintendo's latest handheld announcement.


Nintendo does not take revisions lightly. The Game Boy Advance SP and Nintendo DS Lite offered such marked improvements over their progenitors that they instantly became the de facto standards by which those portables were experienced. And the XL versions of the DS and 3DS caused similar waves, though not as severe. Bigger screens have a tangible benefit to a sizable segment of the gaming populace, ensuring these revisions justified their existence in a crowded handheld market. The news today that Nintendo is releasing a substantial redesign for the 3DS is much more of a head scratcher than a game changer. Questions arise--replacing the excitement that usually encompasses such announcements--as we wonder what the Nintendo 2DS says about the underlying motivations of the Kyoto giant.
The difference is apparent even at a cursory glance. Gone is the clamshell design that has defined Nintendo's portables for the last decade. Tablets have infiltrated the technological sector, and that trend has finally seeped into one of Nintendo's devices. Just don't expect the streamlined design that has become prevalent among the ubiquitous tablets that have flooded the market. Black plastic covers most of the system, and though there is just one screen, it has been separated into two nonsymmetrical sections so as to match the o.