3D, gyro sensor were late additions to 3DS

"3D functionality is the hallmark feature of Nintendo's latest handheld, the 3DS, but that feature was apparently a late arrival to the device's development game plan. Speaking with Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu this week, Nintendogs Cats producer Hideki Konno said that Nintendo's initial plan for the 3DS did not include 3D functionality."

"According to Konno, Nintendo initially saw backward compatibility as the primary feature for the new device, which necessitated a continuation of the dual-screen format with a touch panel."

So the new DS would have just been literally a new DS and nothing more?

Full articles: GameSpot / 3DS Buzz

If it didn't have 3D I suspect it would be called something else :)  still I'm glad it does have 3D.

Not being a huge fan of previous DS devices, I preferred the PSP personally. But even in that not too big of a fan of hand helds.

But im sold on the 3DS and excited about getting one purely because of it being 3D. Not being in a position to afford a gaming setup that includes a 3D TV, the 3DS is an affordable way for me to get into 3D gaming.

Had the 3DS not had this feature, it would have been of zero interest to me.

I can understand how that was initially planned to not have 3d, as the technology would have seemed not cost effective at the time. 

So it was almost just called the S?

I imagine it would have had some other vital highlighted feature.

I always saw the 3D as just a gimmick to get us looking in the system's direction, it just doesn't seem like a major deal to me.  I want big games dammit!

The problem is that no one, neither you or me, knows if it's a major deal.  I am skeptical too as to how it truly enhances gameplay.  But because this a new feature for gameplay, it can't be advertised from top to bottom (commercials).  We have to experience it to know what it does.  I have my eyes set on a few titles that seem promising, from the developers working on them, to judge whether this feature really should be a new element of the gaming medium.

Kid Icarus and Pilot Wings Resort I'll be looking at.  Furthermore, Nintendo always uses a Mario title to showcase what new technology is capable of doing.  If Mario bros. for 3DS doesn't show any promise then I think consumers will turn their back on the new technology.

In a Nintendo Power interview a few months back, the producer of Kid Icarus: Uprising said that when they started production on KI:U, the 3ds didn't have the 3d functionality, so it was just a "happy accident" that the depth 3d will add lends itself so well to Kid Icarus.

I wonder how much they changed the game when the 3d functionality was actually added, in order to take advantage of it.