Nintendo 3DS good for only 3 to 8 hours of play time per charge *YIKES*

[zerocool84]

Remember those all-night Mario Kart DS and Advance Wars marathons? Looking to recreate the magic with the 3DS? Bring a wall charger. Nintendo's just unveiled its best-case scenario figures for the 3DS' battery life, and compared with its predecessors, it ain't pretty. The official numbers are three to five hours playing per game, or five to eight if playing an older DS title (and up to three hours 30 minutes to fully recharge). So... three to eight hours under the most ideal circumstances. Let's look at the family album: the DS is 10 to 14 hours, DS Lite 15 to 19 hours, DSi 9 to 14 hours, and DSi XL 13 to 17 hours (all figures also from Nintendo). Can't say we're entirely surprised; Haus of Mario Chief Satoru Iwata's own words back in October were "it is inevitable that Nintendo 3DS will be a device which requires more frequent recharging than Nintendo DS." Think of it as an extension of the warning label. You can never be too careful, you know.

Damn that's really crappy battery life, like really bad.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/08/nintendo-3ds-good-for-only-3-to-8-hours-of-play-time-per-charge/

 

[Narmer]

And my gameboy advance here holds a charge for weeks. WTF were you expecting considering battery technology hasn't advanced much. They could put a bigger battery but that would mean a heavier 3DS.

 

[RaiderJ]

That doesn't really surprise me, considering how much more powerful the hardware is. The next hardware revision (3DS Lite?) will probably improve on this.

 

[mmntech]

It's comparable to the iPod Touch and PSP.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

well that sucks

the 3D effect is going to have to be really amazing

the DS was really coming into its own as a really solid all-around entertainment device that really excelled at gaming, but the 3DS now looks like its really only going to be good for gaming. Not a terrible thing, but for $250-300+ its kind of a let down.

Although I suppose this opens new doors for Nintendo to really exploit peripheral sales just like with the Wii, I imagine something like an external battery pack would sell really well

 

[Soccerman06]

Honestly $300 is too much to pay for a handheld at this point... even if there's like 10000 nostalgia points from 64 games

 

[RaiderJ]

Honestly $300 is too much to pay for a handheld at this point... even if there's like 10000 nostalgia points from 64 games

I agree with you there. $100-150 is sweet spot for portable systems. For $300, I'd think a 360 or PS3 would be a much better purchase.

 

[Queasy]

It's comparable to the iPod Touch and PSP.

Yep. My Windows Phone 7 gets about 3 hrs out of gaming.

The power requirements of handhelds keeps going up while battery tech isn't advancing as fast.

Part of the big power drain though is that the 3DS has WiFi turned on all the time. Turn that off and you can eek out a couple of more hours probably.

 

[Queasy]

Honestly $300 is too much to pay for a handheld at this point... even if there's like 10000 nostalgia points from 64 games

That's the Japanese price. The US price hasn't been revealed yet. I'm predicting $199.99 to $249.99. Likely closer to the latter.

 

[Ross Ridge]

That's the Japanese price. The US price hasn't been revealed yet. I'm predicting $199.99 to $249.99. Likely closer to the latter.

I'm thinking more like $279. Nintendo doesn't like to lose money selling hardware, and I doubt they're trying to gouge Japanese consumers. If they could sell it more competively in Japan, say with the Ipod Touch about at 21000 yen ($250) I'm sure they would.

It doesn't look like the Nintendo 3DS is going to replace the Nintendo DS (in all it's variants) any time soon. Given it's price and battery life, I doubt Nintendo expects it to. It's a premium handheld with a premium price.

 

[ViRGE]

Well this is really disappointing. Nintendo has always been really good about battery life, going so far as to sacrifice computing/graphics capabilities in order to get a good battery life out of their handhelds (which is one of the big contrasts from the PSP back when they launched in 2004). Certainly I wasn't expecting it to meet or beat the DS Lite, but 3-5 hours is absolutely terrible. They already cut back on the hardware compared to other contemporary mobile devices (e.g. Smartphones) with an ARM11 CPU and the PICA200 GPU; I can't imagine how they're only getting 3-5 hours out of that unless the screen is a massive power hog.

 

[Illusio]

I agree with you there. $100-150 is sweet spot for portable systems. For $300, I'd think a 360 or PS3 would be a much better purchase.

Agreed. As much as I want one, I won't be paying more than $150 for it ($200 tops).

 

[Schadenfroh]

Rare Earth cuts have to start somewhere...

 

[ed21x]

Well this is really disappointing. Nintendo has always been really good about battery life, going so far as to sacrifice computing/graphics capabilities in order to get a good battery life out of their handhelds (which is one of the big contrasts from the PSP back when they launched in 2004). Certainly I wasn't expecting it to meet or beat the DS Lite, but 3-5 hours is absolutely terrible. They already cut back on the hardware compared to other contemporary mobile devices (e.g. Smartphones) with an ARM11 CPU and the PICA200 GPU; I can't imagine how they're only getting 3-5 hours out of that unless the screen is a massive power hog.

As far as I can tell, there isn't a single smartphone with the gaming hardware the 3DS has, especially with iPads looking at best like N64 games... Early screens of Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and Super Street Fighter 4 are putting 3DS right up there with the 360 and ps3,

 

[warcrow]

This is bad news for Nintendo. I mean, 3-5 hours of battery life isn't very portable in my book. I do imagine the inevitable 3DS lite will be more efficient in terms of power consumption, but the possibility of getting 3-4 hours is a bummer.

Disappointing.

 

[bl4ckfl4g]

I'll be getting it. I've never played my current DS or PSP for 3 hours straight. I do travel to SF from AZ almost weekly but the flight is only 2 hours.

 

[Thraxen]

This is just yet another reason to wait for the "3DS Lite".

 

[Queasy]

This is just yet another reason to wait for the "3DS Lite".

But I gotta have new stuff now!

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Keep in mind we are talking about a video game company, they will offer a battery a month after it releases that gives you 12 hours of battery life.....for $150.

 

[ViRGE]

As far as I can tell, there isn't a single smartphone with the gaming hardware the 3DS has, especially with iPads looking at best like N64 games... Early screens of Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and Super Street Fighter 4 are putting 3DS right up there with the 360 and ps3,

Huh? The 3DS is notably underpowered. It's ARM11 instead of Cortex A8 (which will be A9 later this year) and the GPU is basically an OpenGL ES 1.1 GPU with some extensions. The A8 + SGX 540 combo (or Tegra 2: A9 + GeForce 6800ish) is much more capable on paper. That doesn't mean the resulting games won't look good, but it's certainly not cutting edge technology that would be sucking down the power.

 

[ioni]

Wow, with such a terrible battery life, I'd rather wait longer for them to improve it. In fact, that's what I'm going to do. Until it can do 6 hours on a full charge doing the 3D effect, $300 just isn't worth it.

 

[Barfo]

Wake me up when I can buy a 3DS Lite for $120.

 

[zerocool84]

Wake me up when I can buy a 3DS Lite for $120.

That's gonna be a while. This is VERY new technology. 3D without glasses is very recent so I don't see it going that cheap for a while.

 

[xboxist]

3 to 8... such a range. If it gets 8 I would consider that amazing. If it got 3 I would probably be annoyed. Either way, getting one on launch day for sure. More often than not I'm in a position to play my handhelds while they're plugged in.

 

[Barfo]

That's gonna be a while. This is VERY new technology. 3D without glasses is very recent so I don't see it going that cheap for a while.

I know. I have a bunch of games for my DS I seldom play and if I want pretty graphics I game on my PC, so I don't mind waiting 2 or 3 years.