You may notice something on all of Nintendo's boxes.
Nintendo earlier issued a warning about potential problems that may arise from children younger than 7 years old utilizing the stereoscopic 3D effect of the 3DS. Many analysts said they were being overly cautious, and Nintendo themselves said the reaction to the warning was overblown. This label to tell you that your 3DS game can be played in 2D is not present on third-party game boxarts, so it's apparent that Nintendo is not forcing this warning (at least not on the first round of third-party boxarts), but if Nintendo is doing it, I feel it's really likely that third-parties will tag along.
The label isn't huge. Overly small, really. But it simply exists, which is enough to bother some people. I appreciate a good boxart, and that extra bit of text and the white strip necessary to keep it visible when the background is a different color certainly mars the art. Since I find it unnecessary, I admit it annoys me. Not to the point of writing angry emails to Nintendo or anything, but I just hope that they eventually move the cover warning to only the back.
Do you guys think it's a necessary precaution? Does it bother you? Let me know what you think in the comments.
I think it's a smart business move, as they're showing people that may get the 3D headaches and 3D sickness, "Hey, you don't have to worry with our 3D gimmick!"
ReplyDeleteI can't recall the last game I purchased because of boxart, so it doesn't really bother me that much...now if I were an artist, and had less room to work with, I can see it being an issue perhaps.
If I'm imagining the situation of an uninformed customer hearing about the 3DS, then I see three possibilities. 1). Through a television commercial. They could spend 2 seconds mentioning the "warning and solution" there. 2). In store demo as they're shopping for other products. The warning would be a screen at the start of the demo and/or part of the info card/board that would be near by. 3). Through friends and relatives that own the device. From hands-on it sounds like the the most impressive part of the 3D on the 3DS involves the dynamic changes that come from the slider. I can unfortunately see a few people failing to point out the slider, but to me it would be about as infrequent as the people that forget to mention that their 3D televisions can still display 2D video.
ReplyDeleteSomeone could still walk by a selection of 3DS games, ask an uninformed person about it and not get that the games could be played in 2D, but at the same time they would be just as likely to not get the age warning, so in the end I just don't think it affects sales.