Spot on.

You're one of the very few with this perspective. Yeah, I hang out on a number of Nintendo sites and can confirm that the fans obsess over the 3D, and can't wait to play eShop demos because they pretty much consider seeing the 3D in person to be the #1 consideration for 3DS games.

This is classic. #cotw and all that.

Ignore Stephen on this one. There is still a loophole by which you can view the comments all together, restoring the "All" tab that they've rather stupidly discarded.

(I'm only replying to you so that I remain on the front page. You see, this is what people will do now, instead of replying to something relevant.)

It's bad and you should feel bad.

Precisely. This system is ungodly, and I work in web development so I do have quite a developed perspective on UI. Commenting and discussing should focus on continuous reading by simply scrolling down, not on clicking on every little branch in order to see anything.

I'm with you, man. This system is terrible.

No, the PCB isn't the limit. It's the battery more than anything, which fills the right side where you want to put a slider. The battery is by far the biggest challenge for this device, because it has a rather ungodly screen-to-size ratio if you look closely. The 3D screen requires roughly double power because of…

If by "they" you mean HORI, the company noted clearly on the front corner of the box.

The digital overhead has nothing to do with the problem. Nor does the molding department. It sounds like your knowledge of hardware engineering is met by an equivalent ignorance of hardware design, which is where the real hard work comes in, and where every addition is also a subtraction. Sure, they can fit dual…

Actually, I covered that pretty well. The XL is only wider, but it isn't thicker. It also has roughly double the screen real estate; if you know anything about the battery needs of these devices, you know that nearly all of it is consumed by the screens. So you're looking at no additional thickness, but a huge…

Oh, that was a bit off indeed. It looks like they're claiming "up to 6.5 hours" with full 3D turned on. The original 3DS does well to reach 4 hours with full 3D (something I know well by this point), so I'd say it's about a 50% increase, not double.

And Resident Evil in a public place would be stupid to begin with... I have a rule for that franchise: at night, alone, with all the lights off in the entire house. And headphones.

I'll add that the space needed by the slider is significant enough that, for such a slim device, it means cutting the circuit board around that area entirely to make room. See the gap in the original here. Adding one on the XL would mean cutting into the available space in a very dramatic fashion on the right side.

Have a look at teardowns of the original 3DS. The area below the buttons is where the battery fits (giant metal square in the picture here, and on the original system it filled that space entirely but still wasn't enough but for 3-4 hours with 3D turned on.

Not to belabor this point... but there isn't any "space" there. There's space on the front, but the battery is filling the area just below the buttons. With much larger screens, the same thickness, and double the battery life, you can rest assured that the battery this time fills every bit of that space and doesn't…

Not battery power, battery space. It might surprise you that the circle pad doesn't just sit on the face of the device; it woud take up a larger square area beneath it as well. Again, you're missing the rather crucial detail of a second row of shoulder buttons as well. There's no possible way to pull it off without…

Actually, the burden is on you, if you insist that they could (1) add a circle pad, (2) add the required L2 and R2, but still (3) not add to the bulk of the device, which is large but still as thin as the original 3DS. It's simply not possible. You'd end up sacrificing battery as well, and those very large dual…

"Why not just build it in?"