Nintendo 3DS bothers Brits about blinkers Research suggests over a third of Brits are concerned about the effect Nintendo's upcoming auto-stereoscopic handheld games console, the 3DS, will have on their eyes. Shopping website VoucherCodes.co.uk says it questioned 3000 UK adults and found 37 per cent of them were worried about the health alert Nintendo issued in …
"Shopping website Voucher Codes says it questioned 3000 UK adults and found 37 per cent of them were worried about the health alert Nintendo issued in January this year."
I strongly doubt that a third of Brits even knows about the coming of the 3DS, let alone have heard of a health warning from Nintendo.
There's lies, damned lies and statistics.
3D does tax the eyes more than 2D. I expect autostereoscopic systems even more so since you must be positioned exactly or suffer double vision. The 3DS perhaps even more so because the screen is so small and must be held exactly right. I wouldn't be surprised if many people dial the 3D down to its lowest setting or turn it off entirely. At that point, what was the point of the thing again?
... to provide a mechanism to generate more sales, a significant proportion of which will come courtesy of the "must have new shiny shiny, bye bye old(ish) shiny shiny" brigade. And to stymie the efforts of R4DS et al (or whatever the kids are using to play "homebrew" these days). You didn't think it was all about jumping on latest ill-fated iteration (mark my words) of the 3D fad bandwagon, did you? Ah the innocence of yoof.
That kind of survey is only ever done to get the name of the company who commissioned it into the news.
Here's a press release about a health concern. On a scale of 1 to 5, how much does this press release about a health concern, concern you?
1) Not at all concerned.
2)
3) Somewhat concerned
4)
5) Very concerned
Most people will of course, pick a response somewhere in the middle and all responses >1 can be used to describe the person as "concerned"
Then of course, there's the relevance of who they surveyed ("3000 adults" isn't exactly clear).... If it's 3000 parents of young kids (the target of Nintendo's advisory) then the result is going to be skewed more in the direction of 'concerned' than if they asked 3000 parents of teenagers.
Crappy question, crappy survey, cheap publicity... Simples!
How do those people feel about the current £196.99 now currently on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nintendo-Handheld-Console-Cosmos-Black/dp/B004ISLDV0
Under £200 is a little more tempting...but that may be due to them starting the price at £250 rather than think it is actually work £197.
I tested the 3DS in Japan last week. Even after a couple of minutes I was wanting to turn the 3D effect off because my eyes were feeling so tired. Plus as someone else said, holding it in an exact position becomes a pain and invariable you'll move it now and then and get a nice painful double vision. Moving it up and down is pretty much okay but move it more than 1cm left or right and you'll get a harsh shock to your eyes.
As for the price of the games, I don't think anyone really buys them, do they? I thought 98% of DS owners used an R4 (or similar) cart and downloaded the games?
35 quid for a game that can (usually) be completed in an hour. No thanks
You sound like you have no idea what you're talking about. Which DS games can be completed in an hour?
If 98% of owners are bootlegging all their games then why do Nintendo bother? I suspect the figure is quite a lot smaller than that, it wouldn't be worth the effort otherwise, would it?
I just spent £50 on two copies of pokemon (black for me, white for the boy) and I expect, based on previous games, to get at least 40 hours each out of them. More likely, as I like to just chill and nose around a bit, I'll get closer to 80 hours out of mine. So at around 50p an hour that's not a bad rate.
A 95p mobile game might last you an hour, but I don't have any DS games I have that can be completed in anything like that time.
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