There are a lot of people who criticize the 3ds. They criticize 3d period. What are they really criticizing though? Are people forcing them to use 3d? No. Are people forcing them to buy the 3ds? No. Seems like, some people are so spoiled, nothing will make them happy. Unfortunately, many of those people have found a voice through the internet. They suggest the 3ds had a failed launch, like it's the fucking space shuttle Challenger. Would people rather have the 3ds, with a limited number of games and features, or have no 3ds, with no games or features? If you'd prefer the latter, you can easily have it, by simply not buying the thing. These short-sighted types have now gone so far as to discount 3d altogether, and begin to promote their naive vision of AR games.

With AR games, the potential can never be beyond a very small degree. People are always jackasses enough when it comes to the wii. Look at how many broken things have happened, because people are too fucking stupid not to break their own shit while using the wii controller. Imagine a bunch of asses, walking around everywhere, looking through some kind of gaming device, attempting to play a game in an 'augmented' real world. They'd be tripping over things, stepping on shit, and hitting people while pivoting around. I don't care to imagine the results of people trying to play AR games while driving cars.

Beyond the dangers of AR gaming, the format is simply limited. Being that you cannot create the entire world around you, the games are stuck being part real-world and part computer-animation or even cartoony stuff. The two things do not mix well. Imagine looking at a street corner, and some cartoon pokemon pops up... it would look completely out of place and really just be silly. Besides which, because the entire world cannot be created to go along with the gameplay, whatever gameplay emerges will be severely restrained. Sure, maybe you could shoot a zombie in front of you... but where does the game go from there? The bushes and streets in front of you are almost exactly the same as they are somewhere else. Are people going to walk around an entire city, just to complete an entire game? Even if they did, each part of the city would still not be much different from the other parts. You can't create exciting, dynamic environments, because all the environments are not created by you. About the only way it could possibly work, is if you cleared out entire cities, so just like one person at a time could reasonably play an AR game. And if I need to explain what's wrong with that scenario, maybe you should return to special-ed.

Another problem with AR gaming is the fact you have to do all sorts of weird shit to use it. You can't just sit comfortably on your couch. With the 3ds AR card games, you have to put the card on a table, and then stand or sit over the table, as you move around the card to do different shit. Some of it is almost contortionist. One of the best things about gaming, is that you don't have to do uncomfortable weird shit to play them. You can sit on an airplane, or on a bus, or in your car, or anywhere... in your lazy-boy if that's what you like. With AR gaming, comfortable seems to be simply impossible

Is there a future for AR gaming? Maybe in some basic sense. Will it ever be more successful than regular gaming, or for that matter, the much-improved 3d-gaming? Absolutely not. It will always be excessively limited, and may end up being nothing but a novelty or a showcase for 3d-technology. AR gaming will likely never grow beyond something like laser-tag or paintball... never going to go beyond basic stuff and some little maze-like arena.

Is there a future for 3d gaming? Absolutely. That's where the future lies. Anyone who can't see that, must be incapable of seeing in 3d (and thinking in 3d). I'd imagine the 3d critics are the same people who decades ago would say, "We don't need film. It doesn't help the story at all... it just makes it look better. We should just keep reading books.". And then, later on, they would say, "We don't need color film. It doesn't help the story at all... it just makes things look better. We should keep using black and white.". And then later on, "We don't need HD. It just makes it look better. It doesn't help the story at all. We should keep using normal definition.". You might call these people 'conservatives' (as in, people always trying to slow progress, or being almost instinctively anti-progress), but whatever they are, they're really fucking stupid, and as it always does, time will prove them wrong.

If there's one real fault of the 3ds so far, it's that they keep remaking 2d games in 3d. That's like adding color to a black and white movie. The movies were designed to be in black and white, and when you add color, it ruins the art. In defense of Nintendo, remaking things is the quickest way to show people what 3d can do, and of course, it takes time for developers to learn how to fully utilize 3d and to design new games specifically engineered to be played in 3d. How long did it take for filmmakers to really take advantage of color? That's just how it is... it takes time, and when developers start working entirely in 3d, the technology will show its true quality.