To not alienate 20 milllion users

Plus

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=39316116&postcount=259]

Actually, the reasoning really seems quite simple, unless I'm missing something, and if I'm not, it's strange more people haven't realized the actual problem just throwing a second stick into the system would cause.

The reasoning would seem to go back to the original Circle Pad Pro which, since it wasn't built in, it needed some other method to communicate with the 3DS. This method was Infrared and if my understanding is right it's how games know when the CPP is connected. And that's where the problem comes in: Just building a second stick directly into the system wouldn't work since without it using Infrared, the current CPP games would have no idea what to do with it and would just ignore it (a potential solution to this would be to have the built in second stick communicate using IR anyway, but that would mean the inability to use the IR sensor to communicate with anything else due to interference from the second stick, so that's really no good). Or in other words: A second stick built into the system would not be able to have backwards compatibility with the current CPP-supported games.

That's naturally quite an issue and would lead to a great deal of confusion among people if they tried to use a dual-sticked XL in such games, like RE: Revelations and it didn't work. But of course, the problems wouldn't only be with the current games, but would extend into the future as well: If the XL had two sticks built in, since it wouldn't be using IR, that would mean developers would need to add support for the CPP and the second stick on the XL separately, as they'd each be using different methods to communicate with the system. And even the developers who'd want to support a second stick probably wouldn't want to bother with something like that.

Pretty much, despite it hardly being an elegant solution, keeping the Circle Pad Pro was pretty much the best and only way of addressing such problems. The door was pretty much shut on any other ones the day the original 3DS shipped without a second Circle Pad. Any other solutions would just either lead to fragmentation of the userbase, breaking support for previous games, or both, so really, thinking about it, continuing the Circle Pad Pro for both versions of the 3DS really seems to be the only real solution to me.

Did somebody ever ask Nintendo WTF are they doing?

i dont know how people could defend nintendo after this....

The 3DS XL is not meant to be better than the Original 3DS. It's meant to be an improvement. AKA, better/larger screens.

I think Nintendo knew what they were doing when they didn't add a second circle pad to the XL. It's only been barely a year since the original 3DS model released. It's too early to add something with such big implications to it so early on in its lifetime. Nintendo may be looking further down the road to do it, or may not do it at all with the 3DS and use it on their next gen handheld as they may think it's too late to make everyone happy.

Us gamers are more vocal about our opinions, so we don't realize how many other 3DS owners may rage out on Nintendo for adding a second circle pad.

Nobody is defending them... it's either:

1 - Not that important to many people, including me. A second screen changes gameplay for the best much more than another analog pad, imo.

2 - Nobody in their right mind expected it to be any different

It was a mistake not to include it at launch, but now that's the best they can do to fix it. If it's not good for you, you should buy a Vita.

@VicViper
Sorry to say it, but the reason you gave above for not adding the second stick directly is nonsense. They could easily add a tiny bit of code EMULATING the current circle pad pro (=making the built-in stick pretend to be a circle pad pro add-on). If you then ran a game supporting the add-on, the software would tell it that the circle-pad pro is connected.

That is a really simple fix, just a firmware update that allows for the enabling of the CPP functions without requiring IR. Essentially the games would read that the input is coming from the IR whether it physically is or not, that way updates to the games themselves will not be required to be compatible. This also wouldn't change the code for implementing CPP controls for new games, maintains compatibility with the new model and the CPP.

Including CPP controls built into the device should be something rather easy for Nintendo to implement, the 3DS XL was probably in development before putting CPP controls into account, and Nintendo probably didn't want to scrap out on the costs it took to design a larger model without CPP built in. Nintendo can take their time making a new model with CPP built in, doing so later with rejuiventate the system and Nintendo could even fancy a few games that would us CPP controls launching day one of the new model. Games like a 3D world mario land/metroid/zelda/starfox/etc. Of course compatibilty with original controls will stay but timing a launch like that for some big game would really excite people, maybe older 3DS owners will get the CPP if they want easier controls.

It was not my post. But the guy who posted that seems to know things better than most, especially most that just complains. Check the thread, this explanation was well accepted there. And the greatest reason is not even that, it would be idiotic to do so, because of older users.

I'll stop posting here, though. This system is what I wanted since they announced the 3DS in 2010, so I'm very happy

Sorry, I thought it was your post. Well, as explained, the guy who wrote it is wrong, plain and simple. Just because others accepted it doesn't make it correct.