Happenings: I'll go over a few things here: 1) My gaming 2) The 3DS analog 3) the 3DS lite Feel free to jump sections.

Gaming

Well, I picked up Oblivion again. Yep. The best part about that game is I can pick it up and put it down whenever I want. I have had to monitor work computers and builds from home all week and it was nice to kick one of those off and then tab into Oblivion and play a bit... tab out and tweak some things and tab back in. I know exactly where I left off, I know what quests I can go do. Every free-roam RPG should be like this. I also happened to get the itch to go play StarCraft 2 again. I had an hour or so, so I figured I would jump in and maybe play something quick. Well, I hadn't logged in in almost a full year. So I had to find my password... then I finally got in and it wouldn't let me play because I had to update to a newer version of the game. Then once it was loaded, it wouldn't let me continue the campaign because it hadn't pulled all of my 'real progress' from their cloud. Round trip? 35 minutes... Once my campaign options finally showed up again, I loaded the newest one and I couldn't remember what I was doing or why. I could talk to all the people on my ship, angry Jamacian guy, Tough guy space marine, etc... I remember why I stopped playing this now. By the time I got my bearings again I was done "playing". Ah, oh well, it ends in an expansion pack anyhow why bother to keep playing. I've also been trying to finish, every level complete, New Super Mario Bros DS. I have attempted it 3 times only to have my kids lose the cart somewhere in the middle. Well, I'm back. I only play it in short bursts before I go to bed. I beat the game in quick fashion (one or two plays) simply so I can get the option to save whenever. I really don't see the reason games don't have quick saves by now. I know there are people out there that think doing something like this would hurt the game. I use to be one of those people. Now that I'm very much a 'have to get in and get out quick' player I wish more games had a 'save state' option on them.

1. Nintendo adds a second analog to the 3DS.

This has almost been rehashed to death already so I'll be brief. I agree that those that defend it as "no peripheral ever becomes standard if it wasn't a pack in" are somewhat in the right. Did Wii speak do anything? No. Did Motion Plus? (we still get hit or miss if games even support it), has Kinect? Has Move? Did the 64 rumble pack? etc. The list goes on an on. Peripherals = Cash-in for one or two games and then it disappears. Then again, this is a peripheral that is released only 6 months after the hardware release. It is for one of the 'big seller' games if it happens. Sales haven't been amazing so far... if 3rd parties start expecting this I'm expecting it to go standard that people will assume you have one - "Everyone has Monster Hunter, as such they have the analog... as such the demographic that plays that will play ours". But that is a BIG IF. I think if it becomes part of the 3DS Lite (more on that in a second) then devs will actually take the peripheral seriously. But that is still an IF.

2. The 3DS Lite

OK, this is clearly vaporware at this point. No announcement, no hint from Nintendo. No news what-so-ever! Yet it keeps coming up. Why? Nintendo have trained us this way. GBA - GBA Lite DS - DS Lite DS Lite - DS Lite with more colors DS Lite - DSi DSi - DS XL Wii - Wii Motion+ etc. Nintendo has clearly told us - "Our fans matter to us. So much so we want them to have the latest and greatest we can offer while we finish building what we really want to release. We need to fund it though, so thanks fans for backing us up while we design it better for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th iterations." Here is what happened with the 3DS. It got announced. Some thought it was cool, some thought 3D get lost. The market was split into camps - 1) buy now, 2) buy later, 3) buy never. We then found out the price of the 3DS. more people moved from camp 1 to camp 2. So many in fact their numbers were so low they had to drop the price to what they really wanted to do before they got greedy. To make up for it they called all the people in camp 1 'ambassadors' to make them feel better and gave them some free ROM's they found on the internet. Don't worry, ambassadors are still special, some of the ROM's will be 'exclusive' to just them. So, the market is picking back up as people move from camp 2 to camp 1 due to the price drop. Eventually those numbers will start to slide again and Nintendo is going to need to move people from camps. A lot of camp 2 are there for two reasons at this point. 1) Where are the games? and 2) Where is the remodel? (I would put a third, cost, but seeing it drop $80 in just 6 months moved most of that camp already) "Where are the games?" will go away as they release more first party games or developers make great 3rd party games people want to play. but the second half of that group have been trained to just wait for the remodel. The remodel that IS coming. No it isn't announced. No it isn't even 'planned' right now from the public's perspective but it doesn't matter to us. Lots of people in camp 2 are waiting for the remodel. And guess what Nintendo knows that not only will they get people in camp 2 to finally join in with a remodel, but they know a lot of people from camp 1 will be ready to give them more money and 'upgrade'. They just need to time it right to no offend their 'ambassadors'. To Nintendo that is a Win / Win. The remodel is coming. And unless something unseen convinces camp 2 to move to camp 1 earlier, that is just what is going to happen. I'm fine with waiting. I have a feeling camp 2 is a lot bigger than it use to be because of the DS fiasco... I mean cash-ins, I mean 'remodels'. This is the market Mario built after-all. They reap what they sow.