New System’s March 27 Launch Ushers in the Era of 3D Fun without Special Glasses

REDMOND, Wash., March 21, 2011 – Nintendo introduces portable entertainment in 3D – without the need for special glasses. The Nintendo 3DS™ system goes on sale in the United States on March 27 at a suggested retail price of $249.99. It comes with a collection of pre-installed games and fun features, with more on the way.

“Nintendo 3DS can play 3D video games and take 3D pictures, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. “The 3D display is amazing in its own right, but just as compelling are the new forms of game play it delivers, and the groundbreaking ways it will connect players to new content … and each other.”

To celebrate the arrival of the system, Nintendo is holding a midnight launch event starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time on March 26 at the Best Buy store in Union Square in New York City. The event will feature hands-on Nintendo 3DS demos with food, music and giveaways (while supplies last), all leading up to a countdown to midnight, when the Nintendo 3DS system goes on sale. For those who can’t make it to New York, additional midnight launch events will be held at several Best Buy stores throughout the country. Fans can visit http://www.bestbuy.com/3DS for more information. Nintendo is also installing more than 6,000 kiosks at retailers across the country over the next couple of months to let people demo the new Nintendo 3DS system.

Nintendo 3DS has 18 games available on launch day, with more than 30 total available by early June. Nintendo-published games available March 27 include:

Pilotwings Resort™, a high-flying aerial adventure that lets you soar over a tropical island in a plane, on a hang glider or with a rocket belt. You can take on more than 30 challenging missions, or go sightseeing and snap pictures in the game.

nintendogs™ + cats, which lets you train and interact with your very own puppy and kitten. They react to your voice and will even welcome you with a lick of the face as you lean in. There are three different versions of the software, each featuring a different starting breed: Toy Poodle, Golden Retriever or French Bulldog. In each version, players can eventually unlock all 27 different breeds to enjoy.

Steel Diver™, an action-packed and immersive 3D submarine combat adventure. Take command of your sub to control its speed, depth and pitch, and use both the touch-screen and motion-sensitive controls to navigate through lush undersea environments and fire torpedoes at enemy ships and obstacles.

Nintendo’s third-party publishing partners are rolling out their biggest names for launch day. Games ready for March 27 include Super Street Fighter® IV 3D Edition from CAPCOM, The Sims™ 3 from EA, Madden NFL Football from EA SPORTS, Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D from Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc., LEGO® Star Wars® III: The Clone Wars™ from LucasArts™, RIDGE RACER® 3D from NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc., Super Monkey Ball™ 3D from SEGA, BUST-A-MOVE UNIVERSE™ from Square-Enix, Inc., SAMURAI WARRIORS®: Chronicles from TECMO KOEI AMERICA Corp., plus Asphalt™ 3D, Combat of Giants™: Dinosaurs 3D, Rayman® 3D and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon® Shadow Wars from UBISOFT.

Meanwhile, Nintendo is working on Nintendo 3DS games from its top franchises, including The Legend of Zelda™: Ocarina of Time™ 3D, Star Fox™ 64 3D, Kid Icarus™: Uprising and new installments in the Super Mario™, Mario Kart™, Animal Crossing™ and Paper Mario™ series. The system is also ready to play nearly every single Nintendo DS™ game with its original 2D graphics. Nintendo DS games that required the use of the Game Boy™ Advance slot are not compatible with the Nintendo 3DS system.

Nintendo 3DS features two screens. The top screen displays 3D images without the need for special glasses. The bottom screen is touch-sensitive. It also has three cameras. One inner camera points at you, while two exterior cameras let you take pictures of your friends and family in 3D or 2D. It weighs approximately 8 ounces and is available in Cosmo Black or Aqua Blue.

Built-in games and applications include Mii Maker™, which uses facial recognition technology to create a Mii™ character that looks just like you; Face Raiders™, which requires you to shoot at comical depictions of your own face as well as others around you; AR Games™, which superimpose graphics and animations on the real world using the included AR Cards; and Nintendo 3DS Sound, which lets you listen to MP3 or AAC music files, or make your own recordings and play with them using fun filters. The StreetPass™ feature lets some of your games and applications wirelessly swap small bits of game data as you pass other Nintendo 3DS users throughout the day, if you choose. SpotPass™, on the other hand, lets the Nintendo 3DS system detect wireless hotspots or wireless LAN access points and allows users to obtain information and game data when the system is in Sleep Mode. Free software and videos will also become available with future system updates.

Soon Nintendo will roll out a series of additional features for Nintendo 3DS, including an Internet browser, an online store called Nintendo eShop, the ability to access 3D Hollywood movie trailers, automatic and free access to more than 10,000 AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots nationwide and the ability to stream Netflix movies (Netflix unlimited membership required).

For a comprehensive look at all the hardware specs and features of Nintendo 3DS, visit http://press.nintendo.com/nintendo3ds.

Remember that the Nintendo 3DS system features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information about this and other features, visit http://www.nintendo3ds.com.

About Nintendo: The worldwide pioneer in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii™ home console and Nintendo DS™ family of portable systems. Since 1983, when it launched the Nintendo Entertainment System™, Nintendo has sold more than 3.5 billion video games and more than 577 million hardware units globally, including the current-generation Wii, Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi™ and Nintendo DSi XL™, as well as the Game Boy™, Game Boy Advance, Super NES™, Nintendo 64™ and Nintendo GameCube™ systems. It has also created industry icons that have become well-known, household names such as Mario™, Donkey Kong™, Metroid™, Zelda™ and Pokémon™. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, please visit the company’s website at http://www.nintendo.com.

Here are a few things video game designer, Hideki Konno, had to say about the Nintendo 3DS:

“… with Nintendo 3DS, I think because the software side was involved right early on, one of our goals was to build into the system that initial appeal for consumers; that initial inspiration, how to engage them right out of the box.

And one of the ways the software team decided to do that was look at what the hardware is offering — the gyro sensor, the motion sensor, and other functionality — and make the pre-installed applications take advantage of those in such a way that again, right from the very beginning, you open it up and you’re engaged. And I think that’s probably the software side influence on the development.

And I guess really I end up starting to talk about some of the more technical things, and I think the conversation gets back to technology. For example, StreetPass and SpotPass, just having that technology within the device is different than having the software team say, ‘Here are the ideas with which we want to use this technology.’

So that then influences, in a way, how that is implemented and even developed. ‘Oh, you guys wanna use it for this? Well in that case we’re going to have to make sure that the functionality works in this way.’ So it does influence the technology and how it’s implemented as well. And also because it works in sleep mode — again, the coordination between all of those different aspects influences, again, the technology.

I think really what you see in a lot of cases is they build the hardware system — ‘Here’s your hardware system, now go build software for it! Yay!’ But in this case, because we have this operating system built right in, we really need the joint cooperation of the hardware and software teams.

The working together, again, influenced it. Not only the software development team’s ideas and desires and needs influence the hardware team — not only implements the technology that’s available to them, but also influences the way they come up with the initial design and the housing and everything. So they all work together.”

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See a glimpse of PilotWings, Street Fighter, Madden, Super Monkey Ball and more in this launch trailer for the Nintendo 3DS.

Take a look below at the first Nintendo 3DS commercial for North America:

Check out the video below to get a general idea of how to use Mii-Maker function of the Nintendo 3DS.

Check out the trailer for the Nintendo 3DS from Russia.

An announcement from Nintendo reveals the news that 3DS users will be able to download and begin watching movies on their handheld, and then finish watching them on their TV via the Wii.

Netflix will be available this summer for the 3DS. If you’re into moves you can get an unlimited plan for $7.99/month.

Here’ the press release:

Link