Konno discusses the early days of the 3DS, talks dev choices and more

The following comments and information come from Nintendo’s Hideki Konno…

- Konno first heard about the 3DS when development on Mario Kart Wii was ending, and Nintendo DSi Sound was beginning
- both Iwata and Miyamoto showed the device to Konno
- while both the hardware and software teams at Nintendo work in the same building, they never had someone from software move over to hardware development
- Konno was the first to do this
- planning for the 3DS started when the DS was complete, so by the time Konno was let in on the project, there were already prototypes
- the original target for the 3DS was to make something that was backwards compatible with the DS
- this left Konno open to think of new ideas, such as 3D
- the decision to include 3D wasn’t made until 2008
- as we’ve heard before, the first 3D tests were made using a LCD panel that made Mario Kart Wii 3D
- there were also Mario and Luigi figurine viewers in 3D
- the gyro sensor wasn’t added until right before last year’s E3, mostly because Miyamoto felt the system was missing something
- there were originally plus and minus buttons to control 3D volume
- It was the 3D Mario Kart Wii demo that lead to the final slider form
- the team liked the idea of changing the amount of 3D in real-time

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