The Nintendo 3DS was a hit at E3 when it was first shown to an adoring public, and the 3D effect is both powerful and, well, effective. Nintendo has released the full technical specifications of the device however, and one thing stands out: the short battery life. You'll get three to five hours of play in 3D, with five to eight hours of play with classic DS games.
The power of a portable gaming system is that it allows you to escape your surroundings and immerse yourself into something fun and time consuming. A long flight or boring car ride can disappear when you're in the middle of a good game. The less you have to think about the hardware, the better, and battery life should be long enough to allow you to play through an entire flight without worrying about charging. This is a major problem for Nintendo.
Or are we overstating the issue? There will surely be battery packs and third-party accessories to increase the life of the battery, and how many of us really need to game for longer than five hours at a stretch? Of course, the system's required three-and-a-half hours of charge time could be another problem, since portable devices should ideally work for longer than it takes to charge them.
I've been playing games on my iPad more and more lately, and the beefy battery life is one of the major pluses of that platform. Surely this is an area where Nintendo should be improving, not getting worse.
