Nintendo has announced a rather surprising addition to their consoles with the 2DS. This is a 3DS handheld, but in compact format for a lower price. Its most surprising trait is that it doesn’t come with hinges and instead is just one large slate with directional controls fixed in the middle, while the shoulder buttons will now be two giant strips on the top. The other characteristic is that the device does away with 3D view, which sort of defeats the point of the technology, but it’s a small concession for awesome games like Animal Crossing: New Leaf andMario & Luigi coming out on the platform.

Still, that’s not the only thing that the device will let go, in order to be the most affordable of its now three generations. A rather strange choice is to revert the screens back to the size of the original model, while the 3DS XL showed off visual superiority with its panels. Certainly as it’s going for a tablet feel, having a smaller work room seems counterproductive. More so, the 2DS is the only one to only have 1 audio channel and produce monaural sound, though stereo is accessible through headphones. Finally, there is no power saving mode. In return, Nintendo will include a power adapter with a purchase, which wasn’t the case with the 3DS XL, for reasons. So, it’s a little give and take. Full specifications for the handheld in comparison are available below.

Everything you need to know about the 2DS/3DS/3DS XL family.

I hope we see a youtube review on it very soon. I'm kinda thinking about getting one lol. I think it's ugly, but maybe it's not that bad once you see it up close!

http://ggtriple.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/new-nintendo-2ds-model-no-hinges-no-big-screen-less-sound-comparison-specs-revealed/

It's the 2nd coming of the gamecube.
I can tell you that that thing is going to be nearly unbreakable. 3DS had a lot of issues with breakage.

I am more curious to know why the power saving mode isn't available on the 2ds? Its a bit odd since its just software that basically just lowers the brightness of the screen? Wtf

It did?

It's really quite in here i see. I thought people were interested in this new handheld, or is that just me? lol maybe i'll feel differently about it, if i sleep a night over it!

It's battery life looks to be almost as good as the 3DS XL's. So that shouldn't be that much of a problem imo.

I don't know, it looks very odd to me, Maybe I played too much DS that it looks so .. FLAT.
But it's a good move, maybe i'll get one at that price !

That looks fugly in my opinion... They should've kept it foldable.

Well I mean more that expected out of a Nintendo handheld. Still not as much as other consoles.

There were some screen scratching issues when you mishandled it when closed, couple hinge breaks and button unresponsiveness if you held it down too hard. All this children can do pretty easily on the OG 3DS. I've had my R button break after playing OoT3D and the shield button.

Looks like 2DS will have none of these problems. It seems to me that Nintendo is trying to lower the entry price as much as possible and create an unbreakable machine in this thing. It's solely for young kids.

Hitting media hard today.

Wow...Nintendo can't win with whiny fanboys all over the web. The same people asking for Nintendo to remove the 3D on the 3DS (I think they had another motives why) and lower the price are now saying how dumb the idea is in the first place. I am so glad they just released another version instead of removing it for all versions of the 2/3DS. It also makes sense that they are marketing it for VERY YOUNG CHILDREN as the design is similar to those Trio tablets being marketed to kids atm. Nintendo is just expanding their userbase to combat the entry level android tabs encroaching on their domain (kids). This will probably make up at most 10% of all 2/3DS sales .