Hasta La Gadget!

You know those “persons familiar with the [something]” who seems to know an awful lot about corporate secrets? Well, they’ve blabbed again, this time to game site IGN’s UK colony. The secret? The internal specs of Nintendo’s 3DS.

According to the fact-spilling source, the 3DS will have a pair of 266MHz ARM11 CPUs (yes, two of them), a 133MHz GPU with 4MB of dedicated VRAM, 64MB of regular RAM and 1.5GB flash storage.

It’s those dual ARM processors that have us excited, and they kind of make sense on a machine with two screens, one of which sends images to two eyes (the screen works by using prisms to send images out in different directions, which you adjust with a sliding switch until the aim is just right).

We still don’t know when the 3DS – described by Wired.com’s Chris Kohler as “stunning technology” – will be in stores. Rumors point to a November release in Japan, so our guess is on sometime next year. 3D Mario Kart? I can’t wait.

New Nintendo 3DS Hardware Info [IGN]

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

See Also:

• Live Blog: Nintendo 3DS Debuts at E3 Conference
• Alt Text: How Will Nintendo 3DS Work? 5 Eye-Popping 3-D Theories …
• Hands On: A Few Stolen Moments With Nintendo's Stunning 3DS …
• Nintendo 3DS Details Appear on Chinese Blog

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Capcom dishes the dirt on its Nintendo 3DS graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Marvell’s been teasing potent little processors for over a year now, but we’ve yet to see the firm’s Armada appear in anything we’d actually want… but co-founder Sehat Sutardja just let slip that Marvell silicon will power a genuine game console of some sort. “Approximately 15% of the sequential increase [in quarterly sales] was due to the initial production revenue from our ARMADA application processors, primarily as a result of a major customer preparing to launch a new gaming platform,” he told investors in a conference call last week, which roughly translates to “We just sold a load of processors for a new game console, yo” if our business-speak is correct. While there’s absolutely nothing connecting this transaction to Nintendo’s 3DS (which was confirmed to have a Pica200 GPU), we honestly can’t think of a single other game platform slated to launch anytime soon — so don’t be surprised if there’s a quad-core Armada 600 under that variably-stereoscopic hood.

[Thanks, Roxanne]

Marvell says Armada chips will power new game platform originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In an interview from this year’s E3 that’s only just been published, Nintendo 3DS platform producer Hideo Konno says that the upcoming handheld is in its “final shape.” Reggie Fils-Aime, the company’s leading North American voice, has more recently told us that, au contraire, the E3 consoles are not the final design, though parsing the two into one coherent message would suggest that Nintendo’s just leaving itself room to make small changes if the need arises. Konno’s chat with Wired also touches on the 3DS’ screen size, with him suggesting the glasses-free stereoscopic effect could be taken all the way to the size of a TV but requires the user to be in a very precise position, which is what makes it unfeasible. Teased about potentially making a 3DS XL, the veteran game guru says Nintendo’s sticking with the current form factor for portability’s sake, but he clearly isn’t closing the door on the idea if and when 3DS sales begin to wane. There’s a lot more here, including discussion of the new handheld’s analog nub and MotionPlus-like gyro and accelerator combo, so why not show the source link some love?

Nintendo unlikely to significantly alter 3DS design before release originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You weren’t banking on getting your hands on a new Nintendo 3DS this Christmas, were you? The chances that the gaming giant will deliver the hotly anticipated portable by the end of the year seem slim indeed. While the company hasn’t ruled it out entirely, Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime announced late last week that the handheld will ship by the end of March 2011.

Granted, there’s a pretty big window between now and then, but given the announced time frame, I would be surprised to see the new system launching before the holidays this year.

PC World speculates that Nintendo is planning a holiday launch in Japan, with the rest of us getting access to the device early next year. It’s not an entirely unrealistic prediction. Nintendo does, after all, tend to release hardware in its native country first. Of course, it would be unfortunate for the company to just miss the holidays in the rest of the world with its biggest E3 announcement.

You can check out my brief hands-on write up with the device over at PCMag.com.