Anyone screaming "doom" is riduculous, you want 3d, WiFi, much better looking games, a price under 300 and you expect the battery life to be the same as the DS??? Honestly whoever thought that has been getting stoned way too much. The Wifi alone could kill a battery pretty quick, I can only imagine what the 3D will do. I had the PSP b4 they introduced the whole lithium battery. battery life is not a factor for me. 3-5 is just fine.

You had me until the last part. It's not only about how we feel personally about this, but also about how this might hurt sales. History has shown that when it comes to features or battery life, the latter is king. Not claiming this will doom the system, but it will very likely hurt sales, and force a better battery with the inevitable redesign.

Exactly.  While someone did clarify that "soft" actually meant software, the last two sentences of the translation also point to the 3-5 hrs not being the worst case scenario.

"The approximate battery life. May be less depending on operating conditions."

Now think about playing in 3-D mode.  Do you want it to be on the lowest brightness setting?  I know I wouldn't.  The 3-D wouldn't really look good.  It would have to be on a higher setting for it to really "pop."  Now, think about everyone who buys the 3DS for 3-D gaming.  I mean that's what its major appeal is.  Now, think how mad those people are going to be if they can only get 1-2 hrs out of the 3-D feature on a higher brightness setting.  Battery life is the same reason the Game Gear failed.  And I'm not going to claim the 3DS will fail, cause I don't think it will.  But, it will hurt sales.  Especially if Sony can release the PSP2 later this year superior graphics, and it can get 5-8 hrs of life with only a 1-2 hr charge.

Although with the rumored specs, that doesn't look that likely, as Sony is still on the "graphics is what sells" kick.

While it does say there is an AC adapter in the box, I would guess that's for the stand, not the 3DS itself.  Otherwise, there would need to be 2 AC adapters.  In fact, what would be the reason for the charging stand if you can just plug an AC adapter directly into your 3DS?

Wich doesn't indicate that it's the normal scenario either. Basically we can use history as a base here because similar sentences where used for the DSi when it was revealed and we know that the DSi doesn't have that battery life.

They just need a larger capacity battery.  Yes it would cost Sony a little more, but if they see low battery life is hurting sales of the 3DS, I doubt they will make the same mistake.  And there are always ways to cut battery use, just as the PS3 Slim pumps the same graphics as a fat PS3, but uses much less power.

But did Iwata come out when DSi was released and say this:

"As for the battery, it is inevitable that Nintendo 3DS will be a device which requires more frequent recharging than Nintendo DS. This is why we are going to include the cradle, which is a dedicated battery charger. Perhaps we may need to dispatch to our consumers a message, something like, “Please place your Nintendo 3DS on the cradle as soon as you return home with it.”

There's a difference between battery life and battery length. By that statement we don't know if he's talking about the time that you can play or the battery life per se.

What?  What's the difference between how you long you can play and battery life?  Are you speaking of how long the battery lasts until it can no longer be charged again?  If so, that statement has nothing to do with that.