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The latest conversation in the series “Iwata Asks” covers the difficulties the team had designing the Nintendo DS and what they had to do to reduce its size: Iwata: When you design a handheld gaming system at Nintendo, everyone says, “Make it thinner, make it smaller, make it lighter.” Sugino: Yeah. (laughs)[…] That’s our fate. Take the first Nintendo DS, for example. You said, “Make it thinner!” (laughs) Iwata: Yeah, I said, “Do you really think this is all right?” (laughs) Sugino: I was like, “If I could make it any thinner, I would have in the first place!” Iwata: You thought you had made it as thin as you could from the very start. Sugino: Yeah. I mean, with a folding body and two LCDs, I didn’t see how it was possible. But when I gave it a shot, the result was the Nintendo DS Lite system.  Given the fact that Nintendo is notorious for releasing countless iterations of their handhelds, some might have been worried about spending $250 on something that would be outdated within a few months. It looks like that won’t be the case this time around: Iwata: The first thing (Nobuo) Nagai-san, who’s in charge at the Uji plant, said to me when he looked over the designs for Nintendo 3DS before mass production began was “This time it’s fully packed right from the start.” Sugino: Oh, really? (laughs) But he was right. That’s why we don’t have any short-term plans for creating a more compact version of Nintendo 3DS like we did with Nintendo DS Lite. (laughs) Iwata: Yeah. (laughs) When making Nintendo 3DS, we used all our tricks for Nintendo DS Lite—and more—for cutting down on size right from the start. It looks like we won’t have anything to worry about in the way of a slick new hardware revision for some time. For more on the Nintendo 3DS and its upcoming games check out our preview guide . |