doubleofive said:
This is the DSi, 3DS, and DSXL side by side. As you can see, the screens are comically huge on the XL. I can't decide if that's cool, or something for old people who can't see without their glasses. ;-)
The thing is, I hate DS games. I've never found any I am actually interested in. I don't own a single DS game, and the only one I ever played more than a few minutes of was Resident Evil DS, which was a fantastic port of the PlayStation game (really wish they'd port RE2, 3, and Code Veronica to the DS as well). But once you get into the realm of homebrew, it becomes one of my favorite little pieces of technology, Gameboy, NES, and SNES emulation, SCUMM VM, old text adventure games, comicbook reader, it does all these things really well. It's control layout being a tradition Nintendo setup makes it ideal for emulating old Nintendo systems.
This is why I think the DSi XL would be the ideal replacement for my silver brick. With all the things I do on it, the bigger screen would be a definite plus.
The 3DS doesn't impress me in the least. I don't find 3D stuff that exciting, and the game library is pathetic, and everything scheduled for it on the horizon are things that should probably have been launch titles to start with. The fact that its flagship piece of software at the moment is a port of a game that is 13 years doesn't bode well for it.
With the price drop, I'd consider grabbing one instead of a DSi, but then I've heard a lot of murmurs that Nintendo intends to monitor and ban, or possibly even brick units, that are used to run unauthorized software (i.e. pirated stuff, which I don't care about; and homebrew which is all I care about). If that isn't the case, the fact that Nintendo can update it at anytime could potentially mean that they could create "fixes" to prevent use of flashcards just as fast as flashcard makers could develop new ones to get around the heightened security measures.
@Red Five: $20 dollar price difference between the DSi and 3DS; the DSi XL was already $20 dollars more than the DSi, so when the price drop hits at the end of the month, the DSi XL and the 3DS are going to be the same price ($169.99USD).