Nintendo just announced a whole bunch of new 3DS bundles for late 2014. But they’re not New 3DS bundles. They’re just new 3DS bundles.
Confused yet? Thanks to Nintendo’s baffling use of nomenclature, the next few years could be full of mixups like this. In Japan last month, Nintendo announced the New 3DS, a 3DS upgrade with new guts and a second analogue stick. Though it resembles the 3DS we’ve known and loved for the past few years, this New 3DS is actually a brand new piece of hardware, and it will even have at least one exclusive (a port of the Wii’s Xenoblade Chronicles).
The New 3DS won’t be out in the West until next year or later though, which means that any 3DS bundles you might see this year are not the New 3DS. They’re just new 3DSes. So as you go shopping this Christmas, remember that even though the 3DS is totally worth buying, a big New upgrade could be imminent.
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15 responses to “Nintendo’s New 3DS Bundles Are Not The ‘New 3DS’”
I don’t think they will release in 2016.
Nintendo’s really failing in the name department this gen.
To be fair, they’ve almost always struggled with this. How many iterations of Game Boys and DS’s were there?
Those were a little more descriptive in their naming though.
Pocket, Colour, Advance, Micro, Lite and XL are a lot more evocative than the “New” and “Game Title U” that Nintendo seem to be using like it’s their last straw. Granted SP and DSi were not as helpful.
It’s true, things are worse now. But my point was that they’ve never actually been great.
“Game Title U” is just as big a problem as “Super Game Title”, “Game Title 64”, “Game Title Wii”, “Game Title Advance”, “Game Title DS” and “Game Title 3D”. Nintendo’s never been great with names…
To be fair, the NES, SNES and N64 all had radically different branding. This made it clear that, even if the name was similar, it was a VERY different product. The Wii and Wii U have the EXACT SAME LOGO but with an added blue”U” thing that means nothing to anyone. Same with these New 3DS systems. the use the same branding as the old 3DS. Yes, the Game Boy logos were very similar through all their iterations but the GBA, GBASP and GB Micro were all the same handheld in different casings. It’s only when you get to the DSi that things really started to fall apart.
Gameboy, Gameboy Colour, Gameboy Advance = 3 the Gameboy pocket and Gameboy Advance SP and Gameboy Advance Micro where the exact same hardware, just new Form Factors.
The Nintendo DS only came in one level of hardware, despite having 4 Form Factors even the DSi wasn’t a true change.
The 3DS, 3DSXL and 2DS are still the same hardware.
Everybody does it, there was a Master System and Master System 2, the Mega Drive and Mega Drive 2. The PSP and PS1 , PS2 & PS3 all have had resdesigns midlife. Microsoft did a couple with the 360. The PS3 launched two different levels of hardware in this country. One with PS2 backwards compatibility and one without.
I fully expect the PS4 and XB1 to have a 2nd revision a few years in.
Dear god. Whoever is responsible for naming hardware over at Nintendo really needs to be lined up against the wall and shot.
You would think after all the issues they had surrounding the name of the Wii U and the resulting confusion with customers that they would be more careful in the future.
Ipad, ipad 2, ipad, ipad air…
Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox one…
Naming isn’t the problem, marketing is. Given, new is pretty stupid, but it’s not the first, nintendo isn’t the only offender, and this won’t stop it from selling like hotcakes.
I wish more companies could’ve adopted a naming convention like Apple or Ubuntu, just base it off of the year. I know a lot do but more should, there is a reason car companies have been doing it for so long.
They should rename the current 3DS to Old 3DS then rename New 3DS to 3DS. Then the resulting paradox will delete space/time itself!
I feel like console hardware marketers are so scared of losing brand recognition that they’re losing the ability to actually distinguish between their products.
I STILL have people who play lots of games not realising the Wii U is a new console not just an add-on for the Wii.
DS, DS Lite, DSi, DSi XL, 3DS, 2DS, 3DS XL, New 3DS is possibly the worst example of this, but Xbox One has gotta be right up there.
At least Sony have sensible (if boring) names for their products. PSX/PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4 are all obvious where they sit. PSP-1000, PSP-2000 and PSP-3000 make enough sense, PSP-Go was awful but they redeemed themself with the hard to confuse PS Vita.
PSP-1000, PSP-2000 and PSP-3000 weren’t different consoles. Just tweaked hardware with different serial numbers. Consoles have this as well but it was more well known in PSP circles due to the rampant piracy.
There where how many series of PSX? I personally had a 5000 series that broke and a 7000 series. I know there was up to a 9000 series.