Do you have a New Nintendo 3DS? Take extra care of it, as Nintendo can no longer accommodate repairs for these consoles. Find out more here.
Nintendo's Japanese customer service centre has announced that they are no longer able to repair "New Nintendo 3DS" consoles, effective immediately. This means that the New Nintendo 3DS system (KTR-001) is now out of warranty for repairs as parts required for repairs have run out. Despite the New 3DS being discontinued in 2017, it's commendable how long support has lasted.
Do you own a "New Nintendo 3DS"? Will you be effected by this news?
I mean, there are seventy million of them out there, so collectors will be fine for a while, but... man, we really missed a step not embracing the crazy cool 3D display tech in these. I really loved it.
Also, point people at this thread next time Nintendo comes after the emulation scene, because... yeah, this is why.
I'm amazed at how few people loved the 3D. To me, that was the best part. Even in 2D map games like ALBW, the depth made it look better and helped navigate places where you had to fall down onto lower platforms. In spatial puzzle games like pushmo, having the depth made thinking about the problems easier.
Face tracking on the N3DSXL made the experience so awesome.
Higher resolution would've been great though, because it is laughable how low resolution the 3DS screen is even compared to a mobile phone from the same era.
I can't wait for a good emulator to come out that supports upscaling and 3D.
And I hear you on the impact on 2D games. Man, the 3D remasters of Sega classics on the 3DS are amazing and it sucks that they will remain trapped in there indefinitely.
And yeah, emulation. You can get stereo output out of it right now, but it's just such a hassle even if you have the hardware. You can do it, but the 3DS was so seamless that it just isn't the same thing. Pulling that thing out of mothballs if you haven't played it in a while is immediately magical. It still looks sci-fi because it just works. Having some convoluted emulation-to-VR setup or whatever is fundamentally different.
Cool tech, but wrong platform. It gave people headaches and it halfed the effective resolution of an already low resolution screen. I think it would have worked better if the hardware running it could handle rendering two 3d scenes.
The original implementation without eye tracking gave it an (undeserved) reputation for that, but I don't think the current version of it is givin people headaches at all. Having played a 3DS with 3D on full just this week, I also don't find the resolution was the dealbreaker. Obviously the Switch is way ahead of its performance, but coming from the DS they delivered a big bump in 3D performance along with the stereoscopic display.
What I think they had is terrible timing. The 3DS had a rocky launch and then had to make that back during the peak of "stereo 3D sucks" cyclical backlash coming from rushed movie conversions sold at a premium and TVs doing it poorly in the living room. Weirdly a lot of that was coming from the same people that keep hoping that VR would be the next big thing. At the same time. The cognitive dissonance was harsh there for a bit.
Still, it was a thing, and everybody lumpled the 3DS along with it. "Turn the slider down and never think about it again" was a meme, which sucks, because plenty of 3DS games look great in stereo.
I really hate that Nintendo keeps putting "new" in titles. There's the New 3DS, a New Mario game, and I think there was a New Mario party? Could be wrong on that but I remember there was a "New Mario 2" 🤦🏾♂️
I think it was just the New 3DS and the New Super Mario Bros series. Widely ridiculed at the time, but I don't think they've done it for about a decade.
I bought two refurbed New 3DSs from the Nintendo Store back in 2018, and my wifey and I have had massive fun times on them. I use mine during the commute, doing some Picrosses in the subway. And we've done so many dates where we'd get a booth and a pitcher and play doctor mario against each other, or mario kart. Highly recommend getting a 3ds and custom firmwaring it for massive entertainment value.
Not sure what the rules are in Japan but I'm almost sure they have to supply parts and repair for 7 years after discontinuation in the EU. So, it's the bare minimum really, hardly commendable.
The aftermarket will keep these things going with spares no doubt.
They are pretty solid devices! All three of my 3DSes are in great shape after lots of use, but yet I already have one dead Switch due to the sd card adapter port on the motherboard losing some teeth, and don't get me started on joycon drift.
I just recently bought one (and a DSi XL for that matter) and I'm not surprised. 3rd party parts for Nintendo products are usually pretty available so unless your device is experiencing something catastrophic, repairing it shouldn't be an issue even several years from now.
Pretty sure 99% of the problems that the NES had were due to the shitty cartridge connector. It's a very simple part and easy to replace. You can buy off-brand replacements now and fix it yourself. It's not that surprising that they had a ton of spare parts for that.