Nintendo 3DS

[o.pwuaioc]

Gimmick is the hot word now. It is like people are scared of everything...

"Oh they tried something odd and new and I'm not sure what to think of it, I might not like it. It must be some stupid gimmick that has no use and isn't fun at all *cry cry whine*"

"*cry cry whine* Nice display of maturity. If the technology really was so useful, someone would have made a good case for it by now, instead of just getting pissy that some random person on the internet thinks it's rather insipid.

Super Mario Bros. was new and innovative. This is pointless. Want someone's ghost? Why a random person passing you on the street? What if you live in the middle of nowhere? Why not just download the best times?

[Cronozilla]

Just to be clear, technology existing and the time frame in which someone does something interesting with it have no baring on one another.

StreetPass is an opportunity to allow a meta-community interaction affect the gaming experience, this does not sound like a gimmick.

Even though everyone has the right to their own opinion, to be honest, your use of the word gimmick is rather inaccurate. A gimmick is a trick to attract people. It's something superficial, shallow, and has no use outside of getting people in the door (or buying handhelds) .... NO one is buying 3DS' for street pass. And once you use it, you immediately see there is a deeper level of thought into the feature. It encourages social interaction without the aid of the internet. And it's pretty clever in its uses. I suppose it, like the 3D on the handheld is just not something you can get an accurate feel for unless you've used it for stretches of time.

The best example of a gimmick in video games that I can think of is new graphics. While some games will use it to increase interaction with the world and immersion ... most act 100% the same, but they just have higher resolution light maps or more polygons on screen. In most cases it's the same game outside of scripted events with new "paint". That sounds A LOT like a gimmick to me.

Blood in Mortal Kombat is a gimmick.
Advertising the memory width of the CPU registers of the hardware is also a gimmick.
The term "Next-Gen", is a gimmick.
But no one complains about these ...

[KDub]

Street Pass seemed kind of like something I wouldn't use or care for either until I had it in my pocket at work. It was cool seeing who came in with a 3DS and then playing the game, it was also cool seeing who were returning customers.

I'm sorry you took my sarcastic and joking take on the word "gimmick" so close to heart and felt the need to get all bent out of shape. Believe me I'm not the one all distraught over it, despite noticing how often it is tossed around and how unfairly.

Anyway I'm going to get back to chilling and enjoy the night of St. Patrick's Day for one more hour.

[o.pwuaioc]

NO one is buying 3DS' for street pass. And once you use it, you immediately see there is a deeper level of thought into the feature. It encourages social interaction without the aid of the internet.

No one was buying the NES for ROB, doesn't mean it wasn't a gimmick. And I 100% agree with you that better graphics (recently, although certainly not in general), the term next-gen, and misleading advertisement of technical specs are all gimmicks. But still no one has said how StreetPass is anything but. You all claim it isn't, but showing has proven difficult so far.

[MrPopo]

NO one is buying 3DS' for street pass. And once you use it, you immediately see there is a deeper level of thought into the feature. It encourages social interaction without the aid of the internet.

No one was buying the NES for ROB, doesn't mean it wasn't a gimmick. And I 100% agree with you that better graphics (recently, although certainly not in general), the term next-gen, and misleading advertisement of technical specs are all gimmicks. But still no one has said how StreetPass is anything but. You all claim it isn't, but showing has proven difficult so far.

It's a feature that was designed around the Japanese consumer living in urban areas with large amounts of mass transit. It doesn't work that well in the US. DQIX's tag feature was absolutely huge in Japan.

[GSZX1337]

Something I have to ask: Why is a gimmick considered a bad thing?

an ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, especially one designed to attract attention or increase appeal.

EDIT: Fixed my quote.

[Cronozilla]

No one was buying the NES for ROB, doesn't mean it wasn't a gimmick. And I 100% agree with you that better graphics (recently, although certainly not in general), the term next-gen, and misleading advertisement of technical specs are all gimmicks. But still no one has said how StreetPass is anything but. You all claim it isn't, but showing has proven difficult so far.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly why people bought the NES in 1985 when it initially came out. They came for the Rob, but stayed for the Mario Bros. Those were Teddy Ruxpin and Cabbage Patch Kid times people (kids) were crazy about toys like that. Anyway ...

StreetPass allows for some interesting things. It depends on how the software uses it, though. For example, in Mii Plaza there's a game you can play called Find Mii. In the game, you play a pseudo RPGesque thing where Mii characters are the people of your party. Your Mii is locked in a cage. When you tag people, their characters become available to you to battle in new dungeons. And each time you tag a person, their Mii gains a level. It's pretty clever. They do things like, your favorite color (which is the shirt color) dictates magic style. Things like that.

The game is entirely about interacting with people in real-life. You can't just sit and play it, and is, for the most part, a proof of concept. But it's pretty fun and allows you to earn items for your Mii which changes how you're represented online. There's other activities there also, like building puzzles based on pieces you get from tagged people.

Anyway, it builds this enriched experience of purely having the handheld with you. That alone makes it not a gimmick. It's not some, "Oh I tried it, but whatever, screw that" feature. It legitimately adds value to the device.

If there's any gimmick with the machine, it's the pedometer feature. (Though that feels more like Nintendo twisting my arm to walk around with the 3DS more than anything else) But even that isn't entirely shallow.

GSZX1337, It's because the idea of a device being a gimmick leads to the idea that, it will have no common use for you. You'll use it once, then forget about it. Which is why, generally speaking, people don't like gimmicks. It's something fragile and shallow to attract you, while really it's just covering up something that you've experienced before and has been done instead of actually adding new depth/features/experience to a familiar idea.

[GSZX1337]

GSZX1337, It's because the idea of a device being a gimmick leads to the idea that, it will have no common use for you. You'll use it once, then forget about it. Which is why, generally speaking, people don't like gimmicks. It's something fragile and shallow to attract you, while really it's just covering up something that you've experienced before and has been done instead of actually adding new depth/features/experience to a familiar idea.

I think you missed my point. My main point is that a gimmick (according to dictionary.com) is not an accurate term to describe Street Pass if you don't find it useful.

[o.pwuaioc]

GSZX1337, It's because the idea of a device being a gimmick leads to the idea that, it will have no common use for you. You'll use it once, then forget about it. Which is why, generally speaking, people don't like gimmicks. It's something fragile and shallow to attract you, while really it's just covering up something that you've experienced before and has been done instead of actually adding new depth/features/experience to a familiar idea.

I think you missed my point. My main point is that a gimmick (according to dictionary.com) is not an accurate term to describe Street Pass if you don't find it useful.

'Useful' is not even alluded to in that definition. Clever would be suitable in there, though, and obviously it made a lot of people here believers.

[Cronozilla]

I didn't miss your point, I was speaking specifically about the current conversation, not really relating to what that specific definition says. Considering both the device and this feature are intended to be used in some form ... the argument that it's 'just a gimmick' would infer that it's useless in this scenario.

But, abstractly, the core idea of a gimmick being negative is that there's no substance beyond that initial attraction. And to be perfectly honest, that definition is broader than the way it's being used in this thread.

But to be clear ... I'm not the person using it as a negative descriptor here specifically about StreetPass. :p