Nintendo's Mystery DS Portable Revealed

Thanks to GameSpy for its story revealing the first information on the dual-screened, portable Nintendo DS, the previously rumored 'mystery console' that's been lacking any concrete details up to now. According to the piece, the DS "features two separate 3" TFT LCD display panels, separate processors, and semiconductor memory of up to 1 Gigabit. It's scheduled to launch worldwide before the end of 2004." The article further explains: "Players can look forward to being able to simultaneously manage their game progress from two different perspectives, enhancing both the speed and strategy of the challenge. For example, players will no longer be forced to interrupt game play to shift perspective, such as moving from a wide shot to a close up, or alternating between a character's ongoing battle and a map of their environment." A concurrently released official Nintendo press release confirms this information.

NES Rep

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a discount retailer and the nintendo representative said May as a projected release date.

Re:Cheaper components

[qrys]

2 3" screens are also 1/2 the size of a 6" screen. But I'll forgive you this time!

Re:NES Rep

[edwdig]

Based on Nintendo's history, never put much faith in first release date you hear. Your odds are a lot better with the second date you hear, but don't go betting on it.

Seriously, May is 4 months away and we haven't even seen a picture of the device yet, or any indication of what games they're working on for it. We don't even know if the system will do 2D or 3D graphics. I can't see a May release date as remotely serious.

Re:Why two screens?

[digitaleus]

I use two monitors on my deskop PC, and it's fantastic, much better than using Alt-tab. Given your post, I'm guessing that this would suprise you, mayb it's not something one can really grasp until you've used it a bunch.

I guess that the dual-screen gameboy would be a similar situation.

Re:Cheaper components

[TC (WC)]

That's what he said :)

He said that two three inch screens are half the size of a six inch screen, which is exactly the same as saying four three inch screens are the size of one six inch screen.

Re:Look forward to buying one from the bargain bin

[Yorrike]

Yeah, I mean, after all, the GBA/SP is out selling the PS2 worldwide, and the GameCube is level pegging with the Xbox, so Nintendo obviously have no idea what they're doing so far as hardware goes.

2nd equal in home consoles and an iron grasp monopoly in the handheld market. When will dim witted morons like you get a clue and realise Nintendo is doing what is does best? Making games and gaming hardware. And they're making a pretty penny out of it too.

Re:Cheaper components

[CastrTroy]

For all the trolls talking about the six inch screen, well, stop it, he meant one screen, the size of the two 3 inches side by side... and you know he did. stop being so stupid. I get really tired of this kind of thing, and i feel like wasting some karma now.

Re:Strategic Reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

Even you forgot about the Pokemon Mini [nintendo.com.au].
The obscurest system of them all :)
It was actually launched pretty much world-wide, and the 10 games released for it are all really good.

Re:The GBA is a little more powerful than an SNES.

[pla]

It's almost the same arch. as a Compaq iPaq or Jornada, for gods sake. It's like 1/6th clock speed though, to preserve battery.

Not entirely untrue, but I think you took me entirely too literally and missed the bigger point...

The GBA has an ARM-7 chip clocked at 16Mhz. For comparison, the original SNES had a 16-bit 65c816 at 3.58Mhz. Better than 4x as fast, you might say, and that doesn't even consider the far superior chip architecture involved. Fair enough.

Now, for a quick glance at the PS2... It has a 36.864 R3000 CPU just for handling its I/O... Already, it whomps the GBA, and that only considers its least powerful subsystem.