Interface Issues with the 3DS

The Nintendo 3DS has had a bit of a torrid time since it’s worldwide release a few months ago. We all originally thought that Nintendo had it all under wraps but as time goes on it appears that they were not as together as we expected.

Since release the 3DS has had a few issues and a major price drop in August spark the Ambassador program and a sales spike too. I for one hope that the 3DS becomes a success soon but with competition lurking around the corner there are a few things Nintendo could do to improve the 3DS experience.

The eShop is one of the issues facing the 3DS users, I for one find the tiles system difficult to use and a little the titles are very ambiguous. This does have a search section with better categories but it makes searching for new games taxing and has in some circumstances held me back from spending my money on a download.

There is also no way of knowing when new downloads have become available and if so what these are. I’m fed up with the two or three new eShop games each week and Nintendo must know that if other developers aren’t supporting this with new content then they should. There a hundreds of brilliant games on the passed from the GBA and the original Gameboy and surely some of these must be hitting the store soon.

I don’t really see the point in the Video App; at the moment this is slow and doesn’t have very much going for it. When reading up on the hardware before I brought this I got the distinct impression that this might be like the YouTube app I have on my phone but frankly it isn’t/ All the videos disappear after a few days and this means you miss out on anything if you don’t check the application ever day or so. Nintendo need to overhaul this system quickly so that you can store videos for longer, keep the back catalogue and favourite the ones you want to show your friends. Better still just give me a YouTube app.

One of my other gripes is the Multitasking function that Nintendo raved about prelaunch. Again this was one of the functions I was looking forward to and had a dream that I could play StarFax 64 while listening to ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ but I can’t. I understand you can check your friends list (more on that later), browse the internet and write notes but why would I need to do all that at once. I want my damn music playing as I game. My Xbox lets me do it, my phone lets me do it so why doesn’t my newest pieces of hardware let me do it.

For people like me the friends list works ok but that’s because I only have around 10 friends to scroll through. For people with many more then this finding a certain person can be hard especially with the sorting order that only makes things more difficult. If only Nintendo had added a search bar to this too and we could find our friends easily. Another note is that there is no ability to message my friends which leads me to my mobile phone for a text or a call when I want to play online with them.

In fact I could probably pick apart several other areas of the 3DS but I choose not to as this only gets me depressed that I spent so much on what seems like a rushed system. I hope Nintendo provided a decent software update soon and start giving me some older games to enjoy. I am pleased with the Ambassador deals but there has to me more around the corner.