[Robo]

Originally Posted by Brad Size and "cost-cutting measures" aside, that thing just looks more like what the 3DS should have been, much like the DS Lite looked so much better than the DS Fat.

I agree. I loved my 3DS, but its design always seemed a little fussy to me, like Nintendo thought the way to make a mobile device feel luxurious was to make it all prismatic and jewel-like and three-toned and, in short, expensive to make. But Apple's proven all that isn't necessary; the iPad case is just two pieces glued together. (A better strategy for Nintendo might have been to spend more on materials instead of complex manufacturing processes — the metal Game Boy micro still gets a surprising amount of love for its hardware, considering it was obsoleted by the DS a year before it came out.) The 3DS XL is much more confident in its simplicity, just like the DS lite was. And from an ergonomic standpoint, the rounded corners should be a big improvement over the original model's sharper angles.

I didn't mean to imply that I didn't like the cost-cutting measures. Some of them I'm happy with, like not including that chintzy-feeling charging dock, which will allow them to make the packaging that much smaller.* Others, like changing the stylus from metal to plastic, just are what they are; if Nintendo knew they'd quickly have to be selling the 3DS at the same price as the DSi, they'd have included a plastic stylus with that too. The original 3DS was designed as a higher-end mobile device than Nintendo is traditionally known for, and the move upmarket didn't exactly work out. So what's really happening is that people who have been buying a 3DS up til now have just been getting a steal; Nintendo's been selling them at a loss since the price cut.

Cost-cutting in a way that doesn't negatively impact the consumer is just good business, and it's hard to argue that consumers are impacted negatively by the removal of the "your screen is in 3D mode!" LEDs. I very much appreciate the cleaner look, and wouldn't at all mind if the smaller 3DS was redesigned to be just like a mini version of this.

Originally Posted by Brad It's completely wrong and evil that it doesn't include some kind of charging device in Europe and Japan, though. That's bound to piss off some new customers who don't read the fine print.

I don't understand it, either. I'm not surprised they tried it in Japan, where the DSi and 3DS have been much more popular, and not including necessary things with electronics seems to be more common. (In Japan, consoles were once sold without video cables, and I've heard some Japanese cell phones don't include chargers.) But in Europe? One of the objectives of Europe standardizing on micro-USB for cell phone chargers was to allow cell phone makers to not have to include chargers with every phone, which is admittedly a poor use of resources in a market when pretty much everyone has a phone. But A) the DSi and 3DS haven't been omnipresent to the same degree as phones, so fewer people already have compatible chargers, and B) phone makers haven't really started omitting the chargers yet, so the 3DS XL will likely be, for many European consumers, the first device they buy that can't charge out of the box. So, yes, Confusion City.

Even ignoring the seeming inevitability of customer confusion, I'd argue that not including a charger has already been a mistake for Nintendo, because of how much it's messed up the narrative so far. Instead of talking about how awesome the 3DS XL is, everybody is all "WTF, Nintendo?" — Nintendo seems greedy, instead of awesome for making a product many of those forumites were waiting for. And it's not just the consumer-controlled narrative that's been thrown of course. If you watched the European unveiling video, a surprising amount of time was spent explaining that the 3DS XL does not include a charger, and a charger is available separately, and here's a picture of the charger's packaging, and all that is time spent not talking about the 3DS XL.

Nintendo obviously dislikes losing money on each 3DS sold. They said they were expecting the 3DS hardware to become profitable in the third quarter, and — surprise! — that's when they happen to be introducing a new version that might actually cost less to manufacture, but can be sold at a higher price. And that's smart! But not including the charger was not smart. That's a cost-cutting measure that does negatively impact the consumer, to say nothing about that consumer's feeling towards the Nintendo brand. It's just bad all around. There aren't going to be disappointed kids on Christmas morning because Nintendo removed some useless LEDs from the product, but a charger? Yeah, that's kind of important.

*) The wastefulness of the 3DS packaging was my only real complaint with it; even after the top third of the box is taken up with 400 pages of unnecessary documentation, the 3DS itself only takes up about a third of the remaining space. The 3DS and its AC adaptor could fit in a Game Boy game box, and instead Nintendo's shipping millions of them in boxes that are like five times the volume of the DS lite box when the unit itself is no larger. It's ridiculous.