Unity to support New 3DS

This just in from Unite Tokyo! We'll be supporting the New 3DS and the New 3DS XL.

http://unity3d.com/company/public-r...port-new-nintendo-3ds-and-new-nintendo-3ds-xl

 

Sounds interesting *looks over at his New 3DS Ambassador Edition*

 

Great news! But I'm wondering what the New 3DS can handle in term of RAM and processing power. Is it similar to the Vita?

 

Hopefully you guys can provide some guidelines for New 3DS support, give us a good idea for polycounts and whatnot. I'm probably gonna try and keep polycounts low for my project in any case, but still. It's really difficult to judge what the New 3DS is capable of, especially compared to the Vita and mobile devices.

 

As of right now, we don't have a lot of info, I did some googling for the specs but i don't know how accurate it is.
Like the Wii and the WiiU, New Nintendo 3DS publishing will be available to registered Nintendo developers.

 

Since I am not an accomplished developer and will never make a 3DS or any other Nintendo game, this doesn't directly affect me, but I'm nonetheless excited U3D is supporting yet another platform.

 

What about regular 3DS?

 

Nope; the press release clearly says New Nintendo 3DS and New 3DS XL.

 

Great news. Shame they couldn't do it for original 3DS, that would be a huge install base.

I assume this includes 3D support? That's potentially pretty exciting

 

Even though I don't have all the details, 3D support should be in there, otherwise that would be odd

 

i would so much like to be able to deploy to this without the usual hinderance of becomming a registered developer. Now that Sony killed PSM/Vita and Unity followed that route, having a replacing but similar no-hazzle route to some real handheld gaming device would be such a big winner....

 

Here are the specs:
http://3dbrew.org/wiki/Hardware#New_3DS
New 3DS
Type Description Datasheet Source
ARM11 Processor Core ARM11 MPCore 4x 268MHz(~268123480 Hz) & 4x VFPv2 Co-Processor [11] N/A
ARM9 Processor Core ARM946 134MHz(~134058675 Hz) [12] N/A
FCRAM 256MB N/A N/A
Storage Samsung KLM4G1YEQC 2GB NAND Flash N/A N/A
VRAM 6 MB within SoC. Independent of system memory (FCRAM). N/A N/A
4MB of additional memory inside SoC. N/A N/A
Power Management Texas Instruments AIC3010B 39C4ETW N/A N/A
Auxiliary Microcontroller Renesas Electronics UC KTR, custom Nintendo microcontroller N/A N/A
? "TI 93045A4 38A6TYW G2" N/A N/A
NFC N/A N/A
MVD Hardware video decoder (it's unknown whether this can do more than decoding). N/A N/A
New HID C-Stick and ZL+ZR buttons. This new HID is usable for software which uses Circle Pad Pro, see here. N/A N/A

 

Didn't Unity drop support for ArmV6? Arm11 is still armv6, so we will get back support for armv6 and non neon cpu for Android too?

 

Great news! I'm not a registered NIntendo developer, so I probably won't be able to take advantage of this, but as a fan I am excited to see what other developers will do!

 

Welp, looks like I will have to save up for a New 3DS, just in case! (I have the original Cosmos Black 3DS... )

Point being, this is definitely exciting. What was limiting on the old 3DS that prevented Unity support? (I am already cheesed that Xenoblade Chronicles 3D was done exclusively for new 3Ds, which bars me out... )

 

The New 3DS got better hardware, thats the main reason imho.

 

@128bit: Yep... and amiibo!
There's also talk of the new Super Stable 3D, but since I don't use 3D much...
Point being though, Wouldn't the original 3DS have the hardware power of, say, an iPhone 3GS or older android?
Be a pain if "iPhone 3GS" level is actually the New 3DS...

 

FYI we can support the original 3DS but you won't get much out of it compared to the power of the New 3DS.

 

I hope that a Dr Charles Francis Amiibo will eventually be made...

 

Please do! I can work around most limits easily, I have had to for my current mobile game project. Hopefully in the future when I get my Nintendo Developer license (One day... ) I will have 10 futuristic cars bursting through the screen...

You mean the guy lying on the lounge on the unity3d.com front page? Heh... wonder what he would do for Nintendo.

 

Ok, I found something that might be of interest to those hoping to target the original 3DS also, should Unity decide to add support in for it...

Essentially, I did a bit of googling to find a good comparison between the two systems, and found this on GameFAQs:
New 3DS specs:
- ARM11 MPCore 4x @ 268MHz (one reserved for OS)
- 4x VFPv2 Co-Processor (vector processors, like SPEs in PS3)
- 256MB FCRAM
- 10MB VRAM
- Dedicated Hardware Video Decoder
- Seemingly no change to the GPU, clock rate and all

Original 3DS specs:
- ARM11 MPCore 2x @ 268MHz (one reserved for OS)
- 2x VFPv2 Co-Processor
- 128MB FCRAM
- 6MB VRAM
- PICA200 GPU

Only real difference is amount of memory and CPU cores, nothing else has changed much...

 

Please don't assume we will support the 3DS. If we were planning to support it, we would have included it in the press release.

Currently we will only be supporting New 3DS and New 3DS XL, of the Nintendo Handhelds.

 

No, they didn't kill anything you can still develop fine on the Vita. It just so happens you need to pay for a dev kit.

 

@Andy Touch: Never assumed you would... I simply said if you guys were going to support it, then... maybe some of the ideas I put forward.

EDIT: Just saw my previous post, I do admit my wording was a bit off...

 

Im realy happy that im an registered Nintendo developer. Cant wait for the N3DS support to arrive! =)

 

@Aurore:

Now, I know you posted this days ago, but there's still Wii support? I thought you guys cut that...

 

so with the news about unity going to 3ds. can assets like ufps will work with it?

 

Yeah, not in Unity 5.

 

Thought so. Didn't think the Wii would have been suitable for all those fancy improvements.

 

Are you guys allowed to give out some kind of ETA? Or when we will get more informations about all this?

 

We don't have an ETA yet

 

And when will you guys release Unity 5 with full Wii U integration? You said "this Spring", but June is coming soon and there haven't been any news about it.

 

So how would we be able to test our game on the 3ds? Would the project be exported in a certain file type then put on the 3ds's sd card then open it from there?

 

Tickle nintendo's tummy until they give you development kits. Warning: money may be required!

 

Just to clarify, you would still need to buy the 3ds development kit to port unity games onto a 3ds? I was hoping the unity support would let you just upload it to nintendo estore, like with steam or google play

 

here it is for WiiU but i think it too applies on 3DS
https://wiiu-developers.nintendo.com/

 

I'd imagine so.

 

Yes, you do need a development kit. As far as I'm aware, the Nintendo eStore doesn't work like google play or Steam. I recommend contacting Nintendo with questions about their submission guidelines and dev kits.

 

Do we have any details as to who the program will be open to?
I'm already a licensed developer on the WiiU platform, but there is no info available to me about this.

 

Me too, but I have not seen any info on the forums about it.

 

A good question too; are you able to publish to Wii U yet with Unity 5?

 

Due to NDA stuff, I cant comment too much on that other to say I have not...

 

Fair enough, didn't need to know much more than that anyway. Good luck in future endeavours!

 

Yeah unfortunately they are serious about their nda stuff

 

I am not surprised!

 

Il think they are still not settled on conditions. Just wait patiently
But im optimistic, that people who already are registered as an WiiU Dev, are gonna be able to sign up for an 3DS Dev Kit too.

 

I honestly have no real idea, but I would imagine that those current devs able to develop games for both Wii U and 3DS probably got it in a package deal when they signed up. Either that or good 'ol Nintendo says that you need a license for separate platforms...

EDIT: Oh yea, the latter statement's a bit like yours exactly...

 

so what about wii u cross play or download play from wii u to 3ds.

 

Well, as far as I know, cross-platform play isn't limited to PC and other devices; there's a Wii U game that features crossplatform PC/Wii U/SOme-other-platform-I-can't-remember gameplay. It really depends on the game.

And likewise, cross-platform play, if you already have it implemented, shouldn't be an issue with wii-u/3DS (Well, except if your game has a particularly large amount of stuff going on, as that could slow down the 3DS ends!)