The New 3DS/2DS enhancements don't stop at the camera & eye tracking - very few people, I think, ever understood the massive leap in specs. It's like the jump from the Game Boy to the Game Boy Color, except perhaps even bigger.
- CPU got double the ARM11 cores (now 4, was 2) at triple the clock speed (exactly)
- RAM doubled from 128 MB to 256 MB.
- VRAM upped by 2/3 to 10 MB, was 6 MB (which sounds like not a lot, which is true, but the top screen is 800x240 with an effective resolution of 400x240 and the viewport rendered twice from slightly different perspectives when 3D is enabled. Lower screen is 320x240, so it's not a lot of VRAM but it doesn't really need that much)
- Added an H.264 hardware decoder (yes, the original lacked one)
- NFC added, not big but an external reader/writer puck was required for the old 3DS models and amiibo is huge among a subset of fans
- ...Wi-Fi still maxes out at 802.11g (come on now)
The hardware gap is great enough that the New 3DS got a Switch port (Fire Emblem Warriors) and a Wii port with the 3D enabled (Xenoblade 3D). It can also be used for Twitch/YouTube streaming, as it has enough horsepower (and apparently extra hardware, but I'm not sure which is required; maybe someone else can enlighten us in this respect) to just dump the display buffer over Wi-Fi to a PC. Even with the 802.11g deficiency.
It's a great console with a huge library of games, especially with DS backwards compatibility, and with mods (all are vulnerable) it's also a capable and very portable emulation machine. Cheaper as well (although not necessarily significantly) than even the Switch Lite, and more moddable (unless you want to shell out for a Switch modchip).
Nintendo could have sold many more but botched the name and the marketing, like the Wii U. But it's worth a look.
> very few people, I think, ever understood the massive leap in specs.
Because it was only ever used by a handful of games!
When the New 3DS launched, I expected it to be something of a stealth new console generation. The trajectory would been like the Gameboy Color; at launch, games could still be played in Black & White on the original gameboy, but it didn’t take long for games to drop that support so they could truly make use of the GBC’s superior internals.
- CPU got double the ARM11 cores (now 4, was 2) at triple the clock speed (exactly)
- RAM doubled from 128 MB to 256 MB.
- VRAM upped by 2/3 to 10 MB, was 6 MB (which sounds like not a lot, which is true, but the top screen is 800x240 with an effective resolution of 400x240 and the viewport rendered twice from slightly different perspectives when 3D is enabled. Lower screen is 320x240, so it's not a lot of VRAM but it doesn't really need that much)
- Added an H.264 hardware decoder (yes, the original lacked one)
- NFC added, not big but an external reader/writer puck was required for the old 3DS models and amiibo is huge among a subset of fans
- ...Wi-Fi still maxes out at 802.11g (come on now)
The hardware gap is great enough that the New 3DS got a Switch port (Fire Emblem Warriors) and a Wii port with the 3D enabled (Xenoblade 3D). It can also be used for Twitch/YouTube streaming, as it has enough horsepower (and apparently extra hardware, but I'm not sure which is required; maybe someone else can enlighten us in this respect) to just dump the display buffer over Wi-Fi to a PC. Even with the 802.11g deficiency.
It's a great console with a huge library of games, especially with DS backwards compatibility, and with mods (all are vulnerable) it's also a capable and very portable emulation machine. Cheaper as well (although not necessarily significantly) than even the Switch Lite, and more moddable (unless you want to shell out for a Switch modchip).
Nintendo could have sold many more but botched the name and the marketing, like the Wii U. But it's worth a look.