When I say the New 3DS XL, the New prefix is important, as it identifies the 3DS models that are slightly more powerful, have
an analogue nub, extra shoulder buttons, and integrated amiibo support — all of which the New Nintendo 2DS XL includes.
I got to the point where moving
the analogue nub struck a cowbell.
Of course the absence everyone's talking about is the lack of a second Circle Pad
analogue nub, which Nintendo added to the original 3DS via the bulky Circle Pad Pro peripheral.
Steering with the Vita's smaller
analogue nub simply doesn't offer the same precision as a standard controller, as Head Designer Irvin Zonca confirms: «The changes that you feel are probably due to the different way that the processor processes the physics because the code is really the same.
In GT, you didn't have analogue triggers for acceleration, Killzone had to adopt a top down perspective to compensate for just having a single
analogue nub, and so on.
Not exact matches
The addition of a second
analogue stick - and they are proper sticks now instead of
nubs - is an important leap forwards from the original PSP and from our hand - on experience it's a challenge the device and developers are already relishing.
The
nub resembles the kind of
analogue mini-trackpads found on a lot of old laptops, only concave rather than convex.
Of course, the second
analogue pad isn't an
analogue pad as such, but a weird little
nub or nipple, of the sort we still see on Lenovo's business laptops.