[Rumor] Nintendo 3DS Going Widescreen?

[Technik]

An FCC filing submitted by Nintendo and Mitsumi, an electronics manufacturer, seems to be for the new Nintendo 3DS handheld. There's not much to it, but what there is should give hope to fans of widescreen gaming on the go.

That pic above there is most likely a testbed for the Nintendo 3DS. Since the FCC report it turned up in is for its wi-fi system, there's no information on the inner workings of the handheld itself, but as you can see, while most of the board is a mess of prototype components, those two screens stand out clear as day.

The bottom one appears similar to the existing bottom screen on the Nintendo DS. A regular aspect ratio, lighter and looking slightly "spongier" thanks ot its touch screen interface. But get a look at the top screen! It's widescreen, a first for Nintendo's handhelds.

Before you go jumping to too many conclusions, know that this is prototype hardware, so it's not what you're going to see in the final production model. It doesn't take an industrial design student to work out that, if the top screen in this case is widescreen, then when the 3DS ships the bottom screen will probably be widescreen as well.

As for the rest, while it's tempting to spot an analogue stick, be warned that this picture is as hi-res as it gets, so it's tough telling what most of those components actually are (aside from the obvious bits like the screens and speakers).

Oh, and one more interesting thing: buried in the FCC reports is a request by Nintendo that the guts of the handheld not be made public for a time period of 180 days, dating from April 2010. That timeframe would expire just before the Christmas shopping season..

Source

Are those 2 ds game slots? Think, one for ds/dsi games and 1 for 3ds games.

 

[redact]

looks more like one ds cart slot and one for SD card

 

[doeo]

looks more like one ds cart slot and one for SD card

+1...
true...

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

Would be pretty cool, I guess. Although with two screens of different size it might look awkward, but we'll see about that when the E3 arrives

 

[Saddamsdevil]

looks more like one ds cart slot and one for SD card

Ignore the red boxes, the look at the black squares

Yes, it seems that they use widescreen for this prototype.

EDIT: wanna bet only the top screen is 3D at the moment

 

[Master Mo]

Would be pretty cool, I guess. Although with two screens of different size it might look awkward, but we'll see about that when the E3 arrives

How about two widescreens

I think Widescreen is the future and especially more comfortable when playing sidescrolling games (which I hope we`ll get plenty of

- that`s why I always thought, that the DS was great with its inferior graphical capabilities, since developers weren`t forced to use 3D-graphics all the time, even though 3D-graphics absolutely don`t rule out sidescrolling gameplay...), so I really hope, that this time the 3DS will have two wide screens!

 

[redact]

looks more like one ds cart slot and one for SD card

Ignore the red boxes, the look at the black squares

Yes, it seems that they use widescreen for this prototype.

EDIT: wanna bet only the top screen is 3D at the moment

i wasn't saying that the screens were sd card slots
i am not an idiot =.="

if you had read the op you would know i was responding to the poster's idea that there is a separate slot for 3ds cards

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

Would be pretty cool, I guess. Although with two screens of different size it might look awkward, but we'll see about that when the E3 arrives

How about two widescreens

I think Widescreen is the future and especially more comfortable when playing sidescrolling games (which I hope we`ll get plenty of

- that`s why I always thought, that the DS was great with its inferior graphical capabilities, since developers weren`t forced to use 3D-graphics all the time, even though 3D-graphics absolutely don`t rule out sidescrolling gameplay...), so I really hope, that this time the 3DS will have two wide screens!

Yeah, two widescreens would be better!

After all, this is only a prototype

Actually, I'd love to play a game on one of those prototypes, it must be awesome!

 

[Saddamsdevil]

looks more like one ds cart slot and one for SD card

Ignore the red boxes, the look at the black squares

Yes, it seems that they use widescreen for this prototype.

EDIT: wanna bet only the top screen is 3D at the moment

i wasn't saying that the screens were sd card slots
i am not an idiot =.="

if you had read the op you would know i was responding to the poster's idea that there is a separate slot for 3ds cards

Durr, my apologies, I missed out the last sentence.

Did you mean the thing on the side that looks like a second slot? if so, the cart should have contacts on the BACK of it =/

 

[Jamstruth]

An FCC filing submitted by Nintendo and Mitsumi, an electronics manufacturer, seems to be for the new Nintendo 3DS handheld. There's not much to it, but what there is should give hope to fans of widescreen gaming on the go.

That pic above there is most likely a testbed for the Nintendo 3DS. Since the FCC report it turned up in is for its wi-fi system, there's no information on the inner workings of the handheld itself, but as you can see, while most of the board is a mess of prototype components, those two screens stand out clear as day.

The bottom one appears similar to the existing bottom screen on the Nintendo DS. A regular aspect ratio, lighter and looking slightly "spongier" thanks ot its touch screen interface. But get a look at the top screen! It's widescreen, a first for Nintendo's handhelds.

Before you go jumping to too many conclusions, know that this is prototype hardware, so it's not what you're going to see in the final production model. It doesn't take an industrial design student to work out that, if the top screen in this case is widescreen, then when the 3DS ships the bottom screen will probably be widescreen as well.

As for the rest, while it's tempting to spot an analogue stick, be warned that this picture is as hi-res as it gets, so it's tough telling what most of those components actually are (aside from the obvious bits like the screens and speakers).

Oh, and one more interesting thing: buried in the FCC reports is a request by Nintendo that the guts of the handheld not be made public for a time period of 180 days, dating from April 2010. That timeframe would expire just before the Christmas shopping season..

Source

I think I spot the analogue stick, the white circle under the screen. As for the widescreen, wasn't the GBA a widescreen? It deifnitely wasn't 4:3 anyway.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

Or the card is just turned upside down

EDIT: wrong emoticon, lol

 

[Bladexdsl]

I think I spot the analogue stick, the white circle under the screen.

yes glad they finally added that i was sick of using the stylus to replace it in every fucking game. is it me though or does this whole thing look huge?

 

[heartgold]

I think I spot the analogue stick, the white circle under the screen.

yes glad they finally added that i was sick of using the stylus to replace it in every fucking game. is it me though or does this whole thing look huge?

+1

It is huge!!!!!!!! 'ha, nah I think they've a smaller motherboard somewhere, i assume, now Nintendo wouldn't want to make it into an ipad.

 

[Saddamsdevil]

I think I spot the analogue stick, the white circle under the screen.

yes glad they finally added that i was sick of using the stylus to replace it in every fucking game. is it me though or does this whole thing look huge?

+1

It is huge!!!!!!!! 'ha, nah I think they've a smaller motherboard somewhere, i assume, now Nintendo wouldn't want to make it into an ipad.

if they were gonna makeit that big they'd use bigger screens

They're gonna make it fit nice and snug in a ds-like case.

 

[coolbho3000]

Well, it's obviously a debugging board... compare the beagleboard to consumer devices, for example. But getting hold of one of those could mean good things for homebrew in the future.

Some quick things to note:

- There is a cartridge slot, and it looks like an SD slot. The 3DS is not going the way of the PSP GO - seems like it will still use cartridges. Indeed, I don't spot anything that could indicate that this thing has significant amounts of built in NAND; that's pure speculation though.
- The IC to the right of the bottom circled chip looks like the applications processor. No telling if it's a tegra 2 or anything. Looking at nvidia's official renders, it doesn't seem likely, as the package seems to require quite a bit of clearance around it. Has nvidia released any details on the tegra 2's die/package size? The package next to it could be a secondary applications processor, which might be required for backwards compatibility, like the arm9/arm7 combo in the original ds. The tegra does have an integrated arm7.
- Square thing below the speakers probably plugs into some controlling device?
- The fact that it was submitted to the FCC means that ninty is going to be distributing these somehow. It's probably in the first version of the SDK.
- Many serial ports for debugging that won't be in the final revision, obviously.
- No GBA slot to be found

I don't think this will be using the tegra 2, actually. Something weaker is in order. That part is probably comparatively very expensive. Obviously to maintain backwards compatibility it would still have to be an arm architecture processor.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

Yeah, the reason this is huge is because it's still a prototype. Which means not necessarily all parts are to be used in the final product, and the motherboard will be made much smaller than it is now. I'm guessing the '3DS' will be slightly larger than the DSi, or at least I hope it is

 

[chartube12]

Why isnt this in the 3ds section?

 

[TM2-Megatron]

Well, that's not too much of a surprise, is it? Rumours already have the 3DS possibly using Sharp's parallax barrier touchscreen LCDs, which recently went into production. Those are 854x480, which is reasonably close to a 16:9 aspect ratio.

 

[Jamstruth]

Looking more closely at this pic I can tell that the white thing below the screens is almost definitely the analogue stick. The board to the right of it looks to be the control input (parts of the board the contact pads will go over) and I think that just to the right of the touchscreen is the CPU (stands out as there is almost nothing around it) though I am not sure as its absolutely tiny (its something of note anyway judging by the space around it)

Other thing: The touch screen looks to be a DSi screen at least, definitely looks bigger than my DS screens, is it an upgraded one with higher resolution or just normal screen (would be a shame to see the touchscreen neglected in the upgrades)

That is all for this report.

 

[Bladexdsl]

Nintendo wouldn't want to make it into an ipad.

coming up next the 3ds-pad!