Nintendo unveils Circle Pad Pro XL
Nintendo has shown the first official image of its Circle Pad Pro for the Nintendo 3DS XL.
We've known for a while now that Nintendo's revamp of the 3DS, the 3DS XL, would be getting its own Circle Pad Pro eventually. The company has now released an image of the upcoming add-on on, and it's about as awkward as you might expect from a peripheral that bolts a second stick on the side of a handheld.
The first look is up on Nintendo's Japanese site (via Siliconera). It offers a more curved edge than its predecessor, but otherwise looks fairly similar.
Nintendo probably had to produce such a device, since it's already been used for games like Resident Evil: Revelations and Kid Icarus: Uprising. But use of the original circle pad quickly fell out of style--if it ever was in style--and we doubt offering it for the XL will bring it back.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Nintendo unveils Circle Pad Pro XL.
Nintendo has shown the first official image of its Circle Pad Pro for the Nintendo 3DS XL.-
I plan to pick one of these up when I FINALLY get a 3DS XL. I'll only use it for RE, but that will be worth it. RE would feel so awkward using a single stick/thumb pad/whateva.
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Er, now that I think about it... yeah! Hmmm. I guess I got used to pulling the camera around with the second stick in RE5.
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If MH4 doesn't show up outside the 3DS, I'm going to have to get one :(
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Don't think so, I believe you can use the touchscreen to do the stuff it needs instead, it's just compatible.
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Also, I enjoy the hell out of beating up stupid monsters with friends on the Wii version, spent 150 hours doing just that (and another 100 in the single player campaign but I don't think I could do that again without considerably more variety).
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Not sure I want to play in the same areas as MGT, even if there are new monsters.
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I'm not sure I want to play MG3 after putting so much time in MGT. Those areas got stale after a while.
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Two words, Steve. Monster. Hunter.
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The Circle Pad Pros continued existence is just such a strange admission that the original hardware is insufficient for a large category of people/games but not a mistake they're willing to commit to fixing.
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IIRC it's because they didn't want to further screw over early adopters.
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yeah that's very obviously why, but instead they have this weird hedging strategy of trying to satisfy both groups which leaves each less satisfied. I'm sure they make a nice little margin on the Circle Pad and even if the lack of dual sticks did have a significant impact on 3DS sales it'd be very difficult to measure/prove.
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seriously. if it had just come with two sticks I would be more likely to consider the system vs the vita. I'm not planning on buying either though since my gaming has slowed down. I used to LOVE my mobile gaming devices but they just don't make as much sense as an adult. When I finally upgrade to a decent phone that niche will probably be filled.
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Meanwhile, the Vita, which has two analog sticks, gets criticism for its mere existence in a market "about to be killed off by the iPhone and Android".
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the 3DS faces similar criticism. It benefits from much stronger first party titles than the Vita and (now) a much lower price point. If Nintendo had stuck with the $250 price point like the Vita is still at we'd still hear that narrative with the 3DS far more. The huge price cut spurred sales to a degree that makes its install base not a joke.
But the reality is both are being squeezed out by smartphones. The handhelds used to have a technology advantage (and Sony predictably played this angle particularly hard) but with the rate of innovation in smartphones compared to handhelds that's not a viable pillar to base a platform on. 3D would've been a slightly better piece of tech to bet on in this respect but the nature of it required Nintendo to again hedge and not go all in on the idea (ie by putting the 3D effect on a slider and not making games that require 3D to function to create an experience you truly can't get elsewhere for awhile).
Neither Nintendo or Sony does a great job with online services or social on their handhelds (where iOS and Android are fairly poor as well), and both are at an inherent disadvantage due to the nature of cell carriers. My smartphone will be always connected, my gaming handheld? Not about to add a contract for that and none of the major carriers are making the shared data plans particularly enticing.
That leaves controls and software (1st or 3rd party). The reality is that the mobile market makes the value proposition of $30-40 handheld games look increasingly poor every day, when it was already a hard sell to many. Sony and Nintendo have made only the most cursory attempts to foster the free/99c ecosystem because they're a) bad at it and b) it's creating an ecosystem that directly hurts their valuable third party partners trying to still sell $30-40 titles (that are meant to prove why a handheld is better than a phone).
On the controls front physical buttons provide an undeniable advantage in certain contexts. At the same time, so does touch, which Sony recognized with the Vita obviously. But while the physical buttons appeal to the hardcore like us, the success of the mobile ecosystems is increasingly proving that most people are extremely happy with touch controls and certain genres. Even for the hardcore there are plenty of good, deep strategy games to play on phones with touch.
I play a shitload of games across a bunch of platforms in a bunch of genres. I had a dedicated hour a day on public transport and a lot of disposable income. I still can't imagine spending $250 on another device (on top of my phone/tablet/kindle), plus $30-40 per game (and having to carry those, ugh), all for 3-4 hours of battery life of gaming that won't even last me a full flight back to Boston for the holidays. It's a really poor value proposition.
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Agreed. I don't think I would consider purchasing a 3DS without the extra circle pad built in.
There's no reason to not have engineered the XL without it.
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That looks like a screenshot from Game Infarcer.
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