2DS might be a step back, but it says a lot about what Nintendo wants for Christmas

Be honest: if you own a 3DS, have you moved its 3D slider to its lowest position and removed its supposed USP as a matter of course? That’s what we thought. As such, the invective that greeted Nintendo’s announcement of a 3DS revision that removes stereoscopic 3D at a hardware level always felt misguided. In any case, 2DS isn’t aimed at the snarky grown-ups for whom rounding on Nintendo’s every strategic blunder has become a reflex. The company may have been targeting families for most of its time in the videogame business – and the marketing department’s usual lifestyle photography makes out that this is also a system for all ages – but 2DS is for kids.Kids that play Pokémon in particular. 3DS was undermined right out of the gate, first by tabloid scare stories with illustrations of grown-ups going boss-eyed on public transport, then by Nintendo’s own admission that its new handheld’s signature feature wasn’t suitable for the under-sevens. That demographic may not matter greatly early on in a Nintendo system’s life – early adopters tend to be a little greyer about the temples – but with 3DS’s chance of a good Christmas depending heavily on Pokémon X/Y, something had to be done.The result is 2DS, a 3DS without 3D and the first Nintendo handheld in a dozen years to eschew a clamshell design. There’s sound logic behind the latter decision, judging by how many of the Edge brood have seen a handheld’s hinge as something to be snapped or smeared with an unidentifiable sticky substance, but there are subtler forces at work. This flat design is clearly meant to look and feel familiar to a new generation of players whose formative gaming experiences have involved jabbing at an iPad’s touchscreen.http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...-2-610x343.jpgIt also means Nintendo can cut production costs. Replacing 3DS’s two discrete screens with a single larger one (separated into two not by a hinge but a wedge of plastic) will help reduce manufacturing overheads. And while the chunky plastic shell may seem like more cost-cutting, it makes for a typically robust piece of Nintendo hardware that fits as snugly in adult as juvenile hands, one that should survive being flung unprotected into a schoolbag thanks to the thick layer of plastic over the screen. It’s still clearly designed for kids – the L and R buttons that curve around 2DS’s top corners have much more travel at their lowest point on the outer edges of the system, accommodating the slight of index finger – but the weight and feel continue Nintendo’s family-friendly design legacy.There are other little changes. The wireless switch on the launch model’s left side has been removed, and the feature is now toggled by tapping a wrench icon in the system’s Home menu (which also provides access to brightness settings). With no lid to snap shut, you put 2DS into Sleep mode by flicking a switch on its lower edge. There are odd little hangovers from the system’s 3D parent – it still has two cameras on the rear, enabling you to take and share 3D photos – but there are changes for the better, too. Start and Select now have circular buttons like the DS Lite and DSi, instead of the unpleasant flat surface found on the launch 3DS, which was only slightly improved on the 3DS XL.We’ll admit we too have played more 3DS games with the slider at its lowest point than at its maximum, but even if we rarely used it, it’s impossible to see the loss of 3D as anything but a retrograde step. Now the only discernible difference between DS and 3DS software is resolution. Most disappointing of all is the absence of the biggest potential benefit of dropping the system’s one-time USP: improved battery life. 2DS lasts three-and-a-half to five hours, a minor improvement on existing models, rising to five to nine hours while playing a DS game. Yet at £110 – around two-thirds of the suggested RRP of a 3DS XL – it’s competitively priced, and while it might not be able to match a tablet for industrial design or versatility, you can’t play Pokémon on an iPad. Nintendo will hope that proves incentive enough to get 2DS into the hands of a new generation on Christmas morning.

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