ok, to put my few cents on this in regards to the Nintendo won't and can't.
Nintendo has shifted there focus from a Better design, to an Experience design. NES > SNES > N64 > GC with Wii breaking the tradition. GB > GBP > GBC > GBA >GBLite? with the DS breaking tradition. As pointed out the DS is significantly more powerful than the GBA. Where as the Wii wasn't the same jump. The breaking tradition wasn't in the power it was in the hot the games were played. The Experience. I think this is pretty much well covered.
The fallacy being assumed is that going a visual 3D is just a standard increase, like more res, more poly pushing. It's not. the 3D is a new Experience, that's why it's enjoyable in the movies 20 years ago and making a return now. Though yes 3D is going to need more power, but it's not the power Nintendo is considering it's the Experience.
How is Nintendo going to get 2 3D Renders of a scene? Will Nintendo have to double it's power? The answer is No. NDS 3D does not need to double in power. Instead it needs to create a minimal restructuring of the game process.
input
\/
handle game logic
\/
create/update Scene
\ / \/
3dcore1(render left) 3dcore2(render right)
The current DS has
1 developer accessible CPU
1 backend CPU to handle input, audio..... ie non game logic
What get's over looked is that attached to the main CPU is a 3d core chip and a 2d core chip. Which handles the visual rendering of the scene. If Nintendo were to put in an extra 3d core chip, both have pure read access to the same memory. So both can be rendered in parallel from the same game scene. This would actually provide the needed 3D power requirements, without needing to significantly increasing the power of the system. So yes the DS does have a 3D core, so all it needs is another one and some creative parallel processing then 3d becomes not very expensive at all. No double ram, no double CPU. If anything it could run on pretty much the same power as the DS has now.
Squilliam: On Vgcharts its a commonly accepted practice to twist the bounds of plausibility in order to support your argument or agenda so I think its pretty cool that this gives me the precedent to say whatever I damn well please.
