Because they are Nintendo, that's why.

DS Lite famously had a silly proprietary connector for charging, which required their special wall charger... which was literally a 5V charger. It could have been mini/micro USB from the beginning, but no.

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DaSHacka a day ago | parent | next [-]

The 3DS was similar but actually used yet another type of connector. It's very common to find aftermarket chargers that have a USB-A on one end and a split dual DS+3DS connector on the other.

Both generations of console technically take 4.6v and not 5v, but in practice it doesn't matter. That may be why Nintendo didn't just make it micro USB directly (or why they never sold an official USB-A charger for the DS/3DS, only ever wall-wart) though.

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ChrisRR a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Everything had a silly proprietary connector back then. It was back before micro USB had become completely ubiquitous for charging

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delecti a day ago | parent [-]

I agree that it was defensible for Nintendo to have used a proprietary connector for the DS line (and GBA SP, for that matter), but USB was definitely ubiquitous by 2011 when the 3DS came out. Playstation 3 controllers used USB Mini as far back as 2006, and the Vita used USB Micro to charge in 2011, but Nintendo invented a new proprietary connector for the 3DS in the same year. Even using the same port as the DS would have been more sensible.

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kbolino 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The 3DS actually reused the DSi power connector from 3 years earlier, which partly explains why it seems backwards. The other part of the explanation, which is also why the DSi had its own connector, is that it drew more power (4.1W) than the DS needed and more than USB could provide (2.5W). Arguably, Nintendo could have used micro-USB with USB Battery Charging (up to 7.5W) for the 3DS, but it would have meant a 3rd new connector and also more complex circuitry.

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ChrisRR 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But you've indicated the issue. The Dualshock 3 didn't easily charge via USB, as it didn't charge via a standard wall charger. It required a data connection so it would only charge when the PS3 was switched on or from a computer.

The USB standards to charge without requiring a data connection were brought in a couple of years earlier but weren't really common yet

	▲	delecti 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't feel like that really undercuts what I said though. USB charging was quite uncommon in 2006 when the PS3 came out, which is why it was defensible for the 2004-5 DS to have avoided it. It was quite common by 2011 though, which is why I don't think it was still defensible for the 3DS to have avoided it.

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voidUpdate a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thats why I modded my DSi to charge off USB-c instead. Much more likely I'll have a working charger for that

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gambiting a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Funnily enough, with some wiggling you could literally jam a normal mini usb cable in there and it would charge perfectly fine. They changed the connector size ever so slightly just to prevent that.