3Deez Stories

So there's been a couple of big stories this week, with perhaps the biggest relating to Nintendo's announcement of a new handheld system.

According to a press release earlier today made by Nintendo, the Nintendo 3DS will be a new system among their handheld family, and not just another shameless rehash of the Nintendo DS system. It will feature DS/DSi backwards-compatibility, and will tentatively become available between April 2010 and March 2011, though I'm placing my money on a holiday 2010 release.

The most interesting announcement regarding the system, however, is that it supposedly has a 3D display without the need for glasses. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the 3D fad, largely due to the need for 3D glasses, but if Nintendo has figured out a way to do it without any additional equipment, sign me up! As usual, they promised more details to come during E3.

My next piece is nowhere near as exciting, nor is it really news, but the website switchgames.com has finally started offering a service that allows gamers to sell their used games over their online service. The site was originally set up to allow people to trade games amongst themselves, but this is a step in the right direction, as it cuts out the middleman, and it allows for a greater profit on games that aren't necessarily new, but are still worth a bit of money. The main thing I find interesing though is the ability to donate a percentage of the money you receive in the transaction to the company that originally created the game. This has been something that game development companies have been clamoring for ever since Gamestop got big, and the lack of that feature has triggered the development community to design systems that punish people from buying games used, such as the Cerberus network for Mass Effect 2, which costs $15 if you buy the game used, and it's the portal for all DLC for the game.

Finally, potential great news for Australia. The Australian attorney-general Michael Atkinson is retiring. This paranoid old man alone has been responsible for the majority of M-rated games from being released in the country. The hope is that the next attorney-general will be less paranoid, as the approval of an 18+ rating system requires the unanimous vote of the attorney-general to pass. The most famous example of heavy editing in a game was Left 4 Dead 2, which was heavily toned down on the violence and the gore. Here's hoping they don't get someone worse.

Posted from my iPhone, so pictures to come later.