Nintendo revamps 3DS with new 2DS XL

As its name indicates, the 2DS XL harmonizes elements from three existing 3DS lines. The original Nintendo 3DS, a successor to the quirky, massively successful DS, launched in 2011 and romped to 15 million sales worldwide over its first year, temporarily outstripping its predecessor, 2004’s Nintendo DS.

Just one year later and Nintendo was introducing 2012’s 3DS XL, which offered 90% more screen space and better battery life.

Effectively conceding that the 3D visual effect of the original model was not, after all, necessarily an essential component of the 3DS experience, Nintendo issued a 3D-less 2DS, which also disposed of the 3DS’s clamshell design in favor of a wedge-shaped format.

By late 2014, the New Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL had arrived. Design tweaks were in evidence on the outside and, crucially, also internally, making the New models a notch more powerful than their predecessor and therefore better able to accommodate the latest games.

All three lines are now converging in the New Nintendo 2DS XL, which will be priced at $199 in Canada and ¥14,980 in Japan; as a guide, the US price of $149 cuts the New 3DS XL’s original tag by a quarter, and is half that of the more powerful …read more