Musings about the Circle Pad Pro

As a lover of all things Nintendo, it pains me to say that the 3DS is in many ways a flawed product. It is as if the commercial success of the Wii and the DS made Nintendo less open to learning from the world around them. If they had been paying attention, they would have known that one thing holding back the success of the PSP as a "portable console experience" was the lack of a second analog nub.

Then, 6 years after the launch of the PSP, Nintendo go to market with the 3DS making the exact same mistake. However, 6 years later this problem has grown to colossal proportions in a gaming world where dual analog is a given for almost every conventional control scheme. Especially given the fact that the 3DS is built to give a 3D experience, and dual analog controls are the de-facto standard way to navigate three-dimensional worlds.

Not only is this a major handicap for gamers who love 3D shooters, platformers, sports games and adventure games, it's also a pain in the backside for 3rd party developers wanting to bring a multi-platforms game to the 3DS platform that relies on a dual-stick control scheme. And let's be honest, if there's anything Nintendo desperately needs it's solid 3rd party software support beyond the occasional obscure JRPG or fighting game.

As a workaround for the problem, Nintendo announced the Circle Pad Pro. It doesn't make the omission of a second circle pad on the 3DS any less unforgivable, but at least it allows in theory for significantly better controls on future games.

In reality though, it seems that the execution of the CPP has a lot of "room for improvement". After using the CPP for some time with Resident Evil Revelations and Metal Gear Solid:3D here are my biggest gripes with the design:

- It's too bulky for what it does. It's truly enormous. And it doesn't even feel ergonomically balanced - in spite of it looking all curvy and organically shaped.

- It covers the stylus. That's right... as if having a resistive screen instead of a capacitive touchscreen isn't bad enough, the CPP prevents you from getting out the stylus if you need it.

- It covers the wireless-switch. You can not switch WIFI on or off without removing the CPP

- It makes the volume slider difficult to reach

- It uses an extra battery (which also happens to be difficult to replace) and shortens the 3DS's battery-life even more by forcing it to communicate with the CPP via infra-red.

- It makes the 3DS extremely asymmetrical and emphasizes the smallness of the 3D screen - which is now placed completely off-center

- It decreases the portability of the 3DS significantly

That's a lot of compromises in the design, just to add a circle-pad that should have been in the 3DS from the start anyway. Surely even an average industrial design intern would have been able to spot the problems with this execution and do a better job at designing it in the first place. This makes me wonder how long it will be before Nintendo announces an improved redesign of the 3DS...

Time for a 3DS Lite perhaps?