The Nintendo 3DS is due to go on sale in Japan next month and March for other places. The many people who have been eagerly awaiting its launch have just been given a rather bitter pill to swallow, first came the 30 minute usage time warning and now the revelation of short battery life.
The battery life on the new machine is the issue which is going to surprise a lot of people. The original DS gave you between 10 and 14 hours of play time and the DS Lite 15 to 19 hours. On the basis of these figures we all really expected a similar sort of battery life for the new Nintendo 3Ds. And what are going to get instead? 3 to 8 hours.
To make matters worse the maximum figure quoted of 8 hours can only be achieved if you are using old DS games. If you are playing games specifically designed for the new 3 DS then you can expect an absolute maximum playing time of 5 hours. If you want to get the maximum life out of your machine then turning off your backlight is going to help a little but serious questions are being asked about why Nintendo is going so far backwards when it comes to battery life. Even if it is accepted that the new features on it are going to be energy guzzlers most of us expected to see some sort of battery life advances to balance this out
For the latest generation of hand held, cutting edge games machines this a pretty poor return and explains why the device will be coming with a charging dock to let you recharge as easily as possible.
Now the question that everyone is asking is how big an impact this unexpected news on the battery is going to have on the sales figures for the Nintendo 3DS. Will it affect your decision to buy one or not?
Considering that the battery for the 3DS is better then the one for the DSi and DS games on the 3DS will run from 5 to 8 hours It would be impossible for that to be the lowest brightness setting considering the lowest brightness setting on the DSi runs from 9 to 14 hours and I don't see why DS games would use up more power on the 3DS then they did on the DS. You also have to consider that Nintendo said that the battery of the 3DS will be close to the DSi whose battery length on the max brightness is 3 to 4 hours which is close to the 3 to 5 hour stated for the 3DS. If 3 to 5 hours really was the lowest brightness setting considering that the DSi had 5 brightness levels the highest brightness setting would be close to zero and that would be ridiculous or the 3DS only has one brightness setting like the original DS.