Honestly this is bull crap theirs no way Nintendo would do something so wreckless. We all saw what happened when Sony assumed people would work two jobs or twice as much to buy a PS3. Fact is they were wrong and Sony lost a lot of marketshare do to their miscalculation. So lets look at the reasons why this has to be false! (Some already stated)

#1. Battery life, such a system would gobble up battery power. I'd bet the battery would last two to three hours when Nintendo systems are known for 10 hours. The DS had amazing battery life and the 3DS will likely have similiar battery life so the power this rumour would absorb is illogical.

#2.Price, Nintendo is known for offering superior or slightly inferior hardware at a cheaper cost to the consumer and as much profit as possible. The GameCube was a rare occasion where Nintendo could offer the consumer on par visuals at a profit while selling it for 275$ When the Wii launched they launched it at 299$ a price that was both cheap and highly profitable. Nintendo isn't going to gamble by creating a system that will retail any higher then 300$ and as a handheld probubly between 200-250$ which means this kind of processing power is out of the question.

#3.Processing power, the 3DS will need to render all visuals twice once for each eye. That will be strain enough for the system Wii visuals would require alot more processing power then even the Wii posseses. It is likely that the console will have between PSP-Wii visuals as the power of the console will already need to be an improvement on the Wii.

#4. Graphics, duh the whole thing is about graphics and lets face it ever since the GameBoy Nintendo has always lagged the handheld market one generation behind the home market. NES (GB) , Super NES (GBC) N64 (GBA) GameCube (DS), 360/PS3 (3DS). Sure the 3DS could rival the Wii but that is because Nintendo skipped the traditional graphical improvements this generation. However in line with Nintendo's past the 3DS should sport GameCube level visuals.

#5. Developers, fact is Nintendo needs to cater to developers. If filming a movie in 3D costs tens of millions more how expensive will developing a 3D game be? Nintendo is gambling with the market yet again assuming their user base is ready to make the jump to 3D. Nintendo isn't going to push its luck with developers, developing a 3D game will be challenging enough without pushing the dev costs even higher with superior tech. Keep in mind the 3DS is already confirmed to have big support from third parties like Sega and UbiSoft, they wouldn't be willing to gamble if the software dev costs were as high as PS3 or higher. It just wouldn't happen software support would be alot smaller.

In the end all these factors have different variants. For example dev costs would impede Nintendo themselves preventing them from giving the 3DS great support out of the gate and we all remember how that effected the DS and GBA when they launched. Nintendo wants to give us the next big thing and a big price tag is not going to encourage people to buy the product or developers to develope software for the product.

My prediction the 3DS will be slightly more powerful then the GameCube it will have 4- first party titles and up to ten third party ones. It will retail at about 200-250$ and launch in November 2010! I can't wait to see how close I am!

Any other reasons I didn't think of?

Sounds about right.

My guess is slightly below Wii's graphics.. Nintendo is going to get a lot of heckling if their next handheld has better graphics than the Wii.

1. Battery life isn't the antithesis of performance. The performance within a given thermal and power envelope has improved significantly over the last few years. I wouldn't be surprised if the 3DS isn't sleek in its first time around, nor will I be surprised if it gets a  couple of major revisions ala lite/dsi/XL etc.

2. Apple can charge $199 with their rediculous margins for an iTouch 3G and that gives a handheld which handily outpaces the PSP without a gaming focus in the design or operating system. Nintendo can do significantly better again, especially if they target the $249 price point.

3. Actually the rendering resolution would be similar to the Wii at 800 by 640 if they use the rumoured screens. The 2D resolution with 3D being half that per eye. Furthermore since the actual technology behind the 3DS is still unknown at this point it would be difficult to qualify what the architecture of the device will be and what technology/standards of graphical rendering it supports natively.

4. There has been significant investment in mobile computing over the past 5-10 years. The performance of handheld devices within a set power parameter have increased significantly. For instance look at the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor it performs more instructions per clock and its clocked 15* higher than the DS main CPU inspite the fact that both platforms share a common ARM heritage.

5. Developing a 3D game in 3D is no more expensive than developing a 3D game to display in 2D as is currently the norm. Infact it would actually be cheaper given the performance overheads of 3D which mean that they do not have to produce as detailed art assets etc.

From whom, the snobcore....as usual?

Nobody else will care. I'm not saying that it'll be more powerful than a Wii, but I don't think Nintendo gives a shit about the hate coming from some internet/gaming journalist nerds if it is. 

LOL! Wow i cant Wait for e3.

Why did you that bring that up again? Now im expecting a Kid Icarus announcement on the 15th.

I imagine IGN have done this so it gives them something to complain about when the 3DS is eventually unveiled and it doesn't meet this most lofty of expectations...

@IGN:

HD console power would be wasted on a small portable screen.

Wi power, using the latest tech for portable CPUs would be possible, OTOH: with lower computing power and a lot smaller screens total area than a typical netbook's ones, it would require a lot less battery energy.

My prediction is.

It has something powerfull added in it.

but not somthing like they are saying in this article.

Read the article it says theres somthing in there

Thats more powerful or high end then the twines have.

I say : Drum roll....... ........ ....... ........

A chip that turns existing DS games into 3D Visuals.