Nintendo Direct / 3DS XL

[Zero Kirby]

The 3DS XL is claiming to have "90% Larger Screens" (as stated on it's box).
That's almost double. It doesn't look it... am I missing something or just an idiot?

Borrowing an image from some dude on another forum and looked at it



Looks twice as big to me. If you're not convinced I wrote up an explanation in the spoilers.

Spoiler

Double size in two dimensions is not as dramatic an increase as in one dimension. If you have a two-by-two square, the double size is not four-by-four. It's the root of 8 by the root of 8. (Not looking the root of 8 up. Go away. It's about three though.)

A better example is the 3DS screen itself though - which is 400x240. You get 96,000 pixels in that. Very nice. Lots of them. You multiply that by 1.9 (because 96,000 is the screen's actual area) and get 182,400. About double.

If you applied the 1.9 to 400x240, you'd get 760x456, which is... 346,560. About three and a half times as big a number.

So it doesn't look that much bigger because two-dimensional numbers are weird.

But even though the screen's almost twice as big, it's still the same resolution... hmmmmmm. Nintendo why you do this to us