Yesterday brought about a metric ton of announcements from Nintendo to the gaming world, and what was unusual was that none came from the now standard, live streaming “Nintendo Direct” platform which has become their trademark.

Instead, over a series of surprising press releases, Nintendo announced the following…

  • Starting September 20th, the Basic Wii U will be discontinued, and the deluxe Wii U set will become the standard, at a lowered price of $299.99.
  • The long awaited HD remake of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker will hit digitally on September 20th, and in physical form on October 4th. There will even be an exclusive Zelda version of the Wii U available on September 20th.
  • Plus, they did their best to push hard the release dates their remaining titles for the rest of 2013, including The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for the 3DS and Super Mario 3D Land for the Wii U.
But perhaps the biggest, and in many ways, most baffling announcement was that of a new console of sorts...the Nintendo 2DS.

Releasing on October 12th, this “new” handheld is designed to play DS and 3DS titles, but in 2D exclusively. At a price of $129.99, the system releases alongside the long awaited new versions of the Pokemon franchise, Pokemon X & Y.

On one hand, this is a brilliant move, giving kids a system minus the feature that, honestly, Nintendo doesn’t advise they use anyway, plus it lowers the price of entry into the massive 3DS/DS library.

On the other hand, this system is absolutely ugly as sin, an awkwardly designed angled slab, which just looks uncomfortable to use.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but as a rather well worded opinion piece over at Polygon stated (seriously, what a great side they’ve turned out to be):

This is as layman an explanation as you'll find for Nintendo's current hardware.

DS games run on the DS, 3DS and 2DS; 3DS games run on the 3DS and the 2DS, but not the DS; and there are no 2DS games.

Wii U runs Wii and Wii U games, but to play Wii games you’ll need to run the Wii on the Wii U. Wii doesn’t run Wii U games. The GamePad is portable, but it’s not mobile, and it’s like a DS, but it doesn’t play DS games.

Good luck Nintendo, right now, you need it.

Source: Polygon