14 DAY TRIAL // The Nintendo 3DS was the big reveal at the E3 trade show, alongside the motion tracking Kinect from Microsoft and PlayStation Move from Sony. The Japanese hardware maker offered quite a bit of information on its new device, which was initially revealed in February for fear of a leak from the press, but it has not talked about the exact capabilities of the chip that powers the platform and about the way it manages to create the two separate images required to deliver the three-dimensional gaming effect without the use of any glasses. It seems that some gamers might be interested in the new Nintendo handheld even if 3D turns them off.
A Question and Answer session from IGN quotes “developers working on the system” as sources and claims video games could be created for the Nintendo 3DS, which do not use in any way the three-dimensional capabilities of the device, but employ the computing power that is freed for something like “additional texture passes” and for “more complex object and environment geometry.”
The idea is that these titles will miss out on the 3D trend but might attract gamers who are looking for better than usual graphics on a handheld, superior to those offered by the PlayStation Portable, the current line up of Nintendo DS devices or the iPhone from Apple.
It's not clear whether Nintendo is interested in delivering video games for the 3DS that are not in three dimensions, especially when the gadget is first launched.
At the moment, Resident Evil has been confirmed as coming to the 3DS and there are also plans to put out a version of Metal Gear Solid for the platform, which means graphics quality will be a concern to at least some of the developers, so we might see sections of games that revert to 2D in order to deliver better looks.