Nintendo DS to Launch November 21

mcc writes "PlanetGamecube is reporting the upcoming Nintendo DS handheld has been given a launch date of November 21st and a price of $150 ! It is also being reported that the Nintendo DS will ship with PictoChat (a sort of chat/whiteboard software) and some form of the Metroid Prime Hunters multiplayer FPS bundled in. A fact sheet is also available."

Any reliable battery life figures?

[strictfoo]

Anyone seen any reliable battery life figures for one of these?

Re:It's nice to hear..

[Paladine97]

Doomed like the Gameboy which DOMINATES the handheld market? I don't see a changing of the guard anytime soon.

Re:It's nice to hear..

[MadBiologist]

But, the one place Big N has dominated has been handhelds... Let's see launch price of the PSP, but the DS looks like another home run!

Re:It's nice to hear..

[GFLPraxis]

"But is it doomed much like Nintendo's previous hardware? PS/2 and XBox are royally kicking Nintendo's ass at the sport that Nintendo once ruled." Actually, XBox is losing to Nintendo. The GameCube sold more units and Nintendo raked in more profits than the XBox. But yeah, the PS2 is beating the GameCube and XBox put together. Not only that, but Nintendo still rules the handheld market. The GameBoy Advance SP is utterly unrivaled. And the only competitor to the Nintendo DS- the PSP- costs twice as much ($300), and requires you to buy the same games you might already have on playstation 2 on minidisks. I predict Nintendo will remain in dominance in the handheld market. " I, for one, still find the best games ever to be ones that came on the NES and SNES. Final Fantasy series up until 6 (3 in the US), etc. FF aside, Nintendo is still home to some of the best RPGs ever made. Lets hope the DS does the same." I expect it will. I hope we see a Zelda DS :)

Re:Games?!

[Anonymous Coward]

What? That's not unlike the GBA at all. The GBA does not allow you to play any games from any other consoles except the earlier Gameboys. If you're thinking of the NES and SNES games you can buy for the GBA, those run natively - there's nothing to preclude the same sort of porting to the DS.

Re:Games?!

[orangenormal]

What are you talking about? One of the demos at E3 was Super Mario 64 (with multiplayer abilities added, no less). Due to the success of the NES Classic Series, we're bound to see a lot of SNES ports on the DS as well, due to it's increased capabilities.

Wireless Chat with Others

[Enigma_Man]

That are from 30 to 100 feet away! Save the energy of actually looking at people, or raising your voice slightly.

Is there some aspect of the chat feature that I'm missing or not understanding? If you're playing a game with someone within 100 feet maximum, shouldn't you be able to see and/or holler (holla for all you kids) at them?

-Jesse

Re:It's nice to hear..

[drunkennewfiemidget]

Indeed. They do rule the handheld market, but look at how well they held the console market in the 80's. Such is my point. I think it's only a matter of time until someone else comes along, and spanks Nintendo with a new handheld product. I didn't know that Gamecube sold more quantities than the xbox. I stand corrected

Re:Games?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"the GBA doesn't allow you to play your favorite nintendo games from other consoles either"

Sure, with a big enough flash cart.

Re:It's nice to hear..

[miu]

if someone throws down in that ring, dont expect Nintendo to last

Bullshit. Many people have tried to enter the handheld market (at least 4 large companies have launched handhelds in the US that I can remember).

The reason Nintendo owns the handheld market right now is the same reason they ruled the console market until technology passed them by by a full generation - they are a game company, not a software company, not a video game company, not a consumer electronics company - they make games that hook kids like crack cocaine.

Re:It's nice to hear..

[MustardMan]

As others have pointed out, nintendo is FAR from getting spanked in terms of actual sales in the market, especially in terms of handhelds.

While it might come as shocking, not all video gamers are rabid 20-something zealots who think the kiddie gamecube games aren't manly enough for their elite skills. Even more shocking... VIDEO GAME SYSTEMS TARGETTED AT CHILDREN STILL SELL. There is, in fact, a video game market outside of the "living in mom's basement" niche.

I don't know who are worse, xbox fanboys or playstation fanboys. The gamecube crowd seems to mostly shut up and just enjoy their games. Maybe because the gamecube crowd is mostly children who go to school all day instead of posting to seven hundred online message boards while "looking for a job" in the aforementioned basement.

My point: stop your silly video game prick waving. All three systems have good and bad games. All three systems aren't going anywhere. And all three systems are going to continue make a shitload more money than you're ever going to see.

They did it right

[wobedraggled]

Nintendo knows the handheld market, and they pulled this off perfectly.

$149 for the DS is sweet, condiering it has chat ablilities and a game demp packed in.

Pictochat actually has some little fun games built in as well

PSP what?!?!

ds might not do so well...

[mconeone]

The ds is a cool concept, but the handheld market really caters to kids. The gameboy advance, with a cheap price and cheap games will still be more popluar among kids because they are half the price. For christmas, console systems are the same price as the ds, and many kids(read: parents) will choose the $99 gamecube (with metroid prime, the FULL game), or $150 ps2/xbox over the ds. If your kid drops the ds, you're out $150. I hope this thing comes with a parent's guide because: -it has a touch lcd screen which kids seem to love to hammer on. -kids tend to want to use a regular writing device on a touch pad, like a pen or crayon. So its wireless. Can you not use them on planes? Now, if you can hack them, the possibilities are endless.

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

What is largely relevant going to the handheld market from consoles is not really sales figures, but rather 3rd party support. Publishers have been dropping the GC like a bad habit, and they won't likely jump back on the Nintendo bandwagon until DS proves that it can move units.

The DS already has third party support. The number of people who've committed to the DS at this point, even with so little we know about the console or the public's reaction to it, is staggering.

Developers have been dropping the GC *as they pick up* the DS. What you have to understand is that Nintendo is #1 in developer mindshare in the handheld market at the same time it has negative developer mindshare in the console market. The console and handheld markets simply behave differently, what's true in one isn't true in another. Comparing the DS to the Gamecube is simply not a logical thing to do.

Second, once xmas comes and goes, and PSP comes out in spring, nintendo will have no flexibility in moving their price point to compete. They're betting the farm on massive early adoption. You read $150 and you can almost see the sweat on their brow.

$150 is pretty normal for a handheld launch price. I believe that's what the original Game Boy was released at. Meanwhile indications are the PSP will probably be more expensive than the DS-- at the very least, Sony does not have the degree of price flexibility Nintendo does just because they've opted to go with more expensive components. Also we can probably expect those confirmed-but-not-elaborated-on NDS multicolored cases to be released around March, I'd bet... Nintendo seems very, very clearly cognizant of the threat the PSP poses.

Re:Le *sigh*

[nazsco]

child: disposition, time, no money
adult: disposition, money, no time
senile: time, money, no disposition

so, it only get worse. enjoy.

Re:Le *sigh*

[Jerf]

There are upsides, too.

Two weeks ago I bought FFX-2 from Target for 16.88. I just bought the PC version of Knights of the Old Republic, the only game that makes me want an X-BOX, for 19.99, also at Target, even though I actually don't have a machine for it yet. (Hopefully soon.)

Being behind the curve isn't all bad. Let others sort out the dross and grab only the good stuff at bargain bin, or in this case, "clearance because the stupid gaming industry releases everything for Christmas", prices.

(On that note, this is definately an excellent time to buy high-quality games for said prices, because the stores are definately clearing out space. My Target no longer has any FFX-2, for instance. Keep your eyes peeled.)

Re:Any reliable battery life figures?

[TheLoneDanger]

Yup, it seems that Nintendo is much more comfortable underhyping the capabilities of its systems. You can also see this back when they presented the Gamecube, they didn't use the inflated possible poly per sec stats and instead noted what they thought it could reasonably put out under game conditions (numbers which have been bettered in actual games since then).

Frankly, with Sony refusing to properly clarify how many hours the PSP can be played on a charge with an actual game, I'm guessing that the DS is gonna last significantly longer than the PSP. And that has been a key factor in the Gameboy systems beating all of its technologically superior competitors. Sony can talk all it wants about the PSP's capabilities but if I am charging for 2-3 hours to play less than 4-5 hours...

Re:It's nice to hear..

[Ayaress]

Sega dominated the console market, and just couldn't pull it off in the handheld market. Heck, some people say their efforts with the Game Gear and Sega CD sank the Genesis and let the SNES win out in the long run. Sony's got a fragile design behind them right now. I don't think they're going to end up with a system that can withstand the punishment a GBA can withstand (and gets inflicted on it regularly). I don't think the PSP will do nearly as bad as the N-Gage did, but ten years from now, I expect we'll all be talking about it like we talk about the Game Gear now. It was around for a while, it was kinda cool, and the Gameboy is still going.

Re:It's nice to hear..

[vhold]

I honestly just think it's been their price point, every competitor that tried to touch them came in with an overpriced platform that was vastly superior in nearly everyway but was totally impractically priced. Sony is going to pull the same thing with the PSP, but being Sony, they'll be able to keep the thing alive indefinitely (like minidisc) until it finally comes down in price enough to actually get people to buy it.

It will be interesting if the PSP is finally able to infilitrate the ranks of people too embarassed to buy a gameboy the way the playstation one hooked huge amounts of new customers. By making it more of a gadget, capable of playing movies and such, they stand a good chance to get those kinds of customers to rationalize the purchase..

Ignoring past trends...

[Thedalek]

Sure, the handheld market caters to kids. That's why the GBA-SP sells at a rate of about 2 units every minute.

Parents balking at $50 extra? You underestimate the number of upper-middle- and upper-class households. Remember, if you can convince 1% of everyone to buy your product, that's over 60,000,000 people worldwide.

Re:Released first in the US

[rsmith-mac]

I'm sure it has everything to do with Thanksgiving. It makes more sense for Nintendo to ship the first batch to NA in order to make Black Friday, and ship the second batch to Japan, than it would the other way around. Travel time would be a big factor too; unless they fly everything, it's ~2 weeks by ship to NA, but only days to Japan, so a NA release second could have been almost 2 weeks after the current Japan release date.

Re:It's nice to hear..

[meringuoid]

They dominate the console market for god's sake!

But that's a different market. Nokia dominate the mobile phone market, and I think Nintendo have more to fear from them as far as the Gameboy goes. To my mind, N-Gage was crippled by the fact that it was a physical monstrosity that you couldn't imagine using as a phone. If Nokia can make N-Gage 2 into something more ergonomic - a phone that happens to play SNES-quality games, rather than an inferior Gameboy that happens to make phonecalls - they could really squeeze Nintendo.

After all, if I can play good games on my phone anyway, why would I buy an extra box to carry round?

Re:It's nice to hear..

[ratlater]

Based on most estimates it will cost at bare minimum $250. I'm guessing $300 or more though.

-matt

Re:It's nice to hear..

[Anonymous Coward]

PSP has the PlayStation brand. That's what'll guarantee its success.

Rationale for Nintendo DS North America release

[securitas]

The following business reasons might explain why they are releasing the Nintedo DS in North America first:

2004-09-21 09:42:51 Nintendo DS to Launch in N. America Nov. 21 @ $150 (Index,Games) (rejected)

John Markoff at the New York Times [nytimes.com] (mirror at CNet [com.com]) reports that the Nintendo DS [geartest.com] handheld game system will launch in North America on Nov. 21 with a retail price of almost $150. Apparently Nintendo hopes to avoid a direct sales confrontation with the Sony PSP [geartest.com], which will launch in Japan later this year. However, Walmart [walmart.com] still lists availability of the Nintendo DS Platinum on Nov. 30 for $199.82. The retailer was probably caught unaware since Nintendo published its press release [businesswire.com] on BusinessWire at 1:30 AM Eastern Time.

Apologies for the cross-post but it seems relevant here.