Nyko has announced a replacement battery that they state offers "double the battery life" of the battery that Nintendo ships with the DS. It is understandably bigger. Since the 3DS is designed with a back/battery-cover that is the size of the back of the 3DS, it would stand to reason that one could be made that wasn't that much bigger and would have a style to seamlessly matches the color of your 3DS. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be that replacement battery just yet. But it's $20 for "double the battery life" which doesn't seem like a bad deal at all. It doesn't seem to be induction based so it won't work with the cradle, but you can still charge it via your AC adapter. Speaking of, I wonder how long it might take to charge this thing..... Nintendo's original press releases stated a charge time of about 3 hours for the 3DS with the battery it ships with. This is something I haven't heard discussed yet from people that have grabbed the Japanese 3DS, so I'm not sure if it does take that long, but (based on admittedly little knowledge of batteries) it would stand to reason that a bigger battery simply takes longer to charge off of the same charging cable.
Nyko seems to have emerged over the last few years as a well-meaning third-party accessories manufacturer. They've had a few missteps like a device that's supposed to help cool off your 360, but instead could burn the console, but it isn't nearly on the level of how I remember Mad Catz where every single product was just......worthless. I've only bought one non-first-party-endorsed third-party accessories since the horrible stuff I bought from Mad Catz for the GameCube, and that was this lovely metal stylus. I wouldn't necessarily say Mad Catz has been the reason all these years, but mostly I don't often see the point in most accessories.....or, I didn't. Both my DS and DS lite have some serious elements about them that just no longer work, and maybe that could have been solved if I had used a protective case...maybe not. I'm very interested in buying one for my 3DS since I want to carry it often, and it's as pricey as a home console. Anyway, went a bit sideways with that.
UPDATE: Hm, came across a picture of this thing on the black 3DS (now at the top). Doesn't look as out of place as I thought. I see now that the taper of the battery really complements the very edges of the back of the 3DS. If they made one that complemented the blue 3DS I'm getting better, then I'd be all over it if the battery life of the packed in battery starts to bother me.
Anyone think this will be a necessary accessory for their use of the 3DS? Let me know in the comments.
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I think for travelling purposes, this would be a good choice, as long as the battery life is double.
ReplyDeleteEven for those gamers that are going to ignore the Nintendo warnings with the 3DS, and play it for many hours straight, this could be beneficial for them.
Once Netflix gets on the 3DS, I think it would be interesting to test the regular battery's life, versus this battery's life, with the service.
Yarg. Noticed a typo in my post and clicked off the page to edit it while I was typing out a comment. All gone.
ReplyDeleteI can't quite remember what the suggested play times are for 3D (maybe 30 minutes at a time?), but for as long as I can remember, Nintendo has always suggested 15 minute breaks for every hour of play on their systems.
Interesting idea about using Netflix to test the battery. You might not even need to set a timer since you have the movie/show lengths at hand. I hadn't really thought about it, but the service probably doesn't use much processing power (I've never noticed the fans kick-on in my Wii while using Netflix) and it isn't using 3D, so I wonder how much energy the constant wireless use would consume, and how much time we'll get out of 3DS's non-gaming applications in general.
"Yarg. Noticed a typo in my post and clicked off the page to edit it while I was typing out a comment. All gone."
ReplyDeleteLOL! I do this ALL the time when leaving comments. I'll have like 2-3 sentences typed out, then my non-diagnosed ADHD will kick in, and I'll be like, "Ohhh, I haven't checked out this TAB in about 20 minutes..." and totally forget about my comment, and forget to click submit!
Anywho, I'm always surprised when companies, like Nyko with this, don't do time lapsed videos showing how long the regular battery is, versus their expanded battery...I would think it would help sales of their product, and not really require much on their end.
I'm might just wait for battery that triples the 3DS battery life but the price for the battery is pretty good though.
ReplyDelete@Falco8
ReplyDeleteI said I would buy one if I found the standard battery life to be a problem, but it sounds like you feel you'll definitely be inconvenienced by the 3DS's battery life, so I guess my first question is; are you planning on getting a 3DS at launch? And if so, why are you willing to put up with the included battery and wait for a replacement battery with thrice the battery life? That situation is a bit funny to me, but it might not be your situation.
@coffee
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear I'm not alone in that boat.
For a video comparison, it might be a bit more complicated than all that. First thing I can think of is that they might simply not have a 3DS of their own. I was hearing about how iPad 2 accessory makers got the necessary dimensions of the iPad 2, but didn't get an actual or mock-up iPad 2 as per Apple's standard procedure. I'm guessing it was the same for Nyko. The picture could be "photoshop'd", a 3DS that Nintendo let them photograph for a day, or (by the time they announced it) a 3DS imported from Japan.
Also worth considering, what would they run to show off the battery life? You likely need permission from Nintendo to show off the menus for a commercial product, and permission from the publishers of any 3DS games. They would only be able to get Japanese games for a U.S. audience, to boot. They could have tried and been denied, or they could have thought it was too much trouble when they could say something that might be more appealing than the truth.
The battery is dropping day-and-date with the 3DS, so there will be reviews with battery life tests from third-parties soon after since the battery life of the 3DS is a fairly hot issue.
If the video was time-lapsed, they shouldn't need permission for showing anything really, especially if it's just a YouTube type video showing off the product.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say "time-lapsed", I'm meaning where they set up the camera(s) on the 3DS with/without their battery, and then set the time-lapse function to capture a picture(or video) every 10-20 minutes...then just pieces that together...in video form somehow.