Nintendo reiterates 3DS 3D warning for young children

Nintendo's issued a 3DS health warning today, saying that children under the age of six should not play the console in 3D mode.

Said the firm on its Japanese website (via machine translation):

"Vision of children under the age of six has been said that the developmental stage, experts, as well as Nintendo 3DS, 3D, including 3D movies and television, delivers 3D images with different left and right eye images The view that has a potential impact on the growth of children's eyes.

"To avoid the impact of 3D visual images of children, Nintendo 3DS [2D] does become available so we switched to video, enough for everyone to enjoy."

The warning is a reiteration. NoA boss Reggie Fils-Aime told Kotaku in June last year roughly the same thing:

"We will recommend that very young children not look at 3D images. That's because, [in] young children, the muscles for the eyes are not fully formed... This is the same messaging that the industry is putting out with 3D movies, so it is a standard protocol. We have the same type of messaging for the [1990s Nintendo virtual reality machine] Virtual Boy, as an example."

At the time, Nintendo said children under the age of seven shouldn't look at 3D.

3DS releases on February 26 in Japan, to be followed by global launches in March.

Nintendo isn't the first console company to warn of the potential negative effects of 3D use. In July last year, Sony updated PS3’s terms and conditions to guard against “eye-strain, eye-fatigue or nausea” when viewing the technology.