DS Pre-Orders Stopped as Sales Soar 232
GamesIndustry.biz has the story that major retailers Gamestop and EBGames are likely going to stop DS Preorders because they're coming so fast that they won't be able to meet demand when the system launches. From the article: "It appears that six games will be available on day one - Nintendo's Super Mario 64 DS, Sega's Feel The Magic XY/XX, Activision's Spider-Man 2, Ubisoft's Asphalt Urban GT and two from EA - Madden NFL 2005 and The Urbz: Sims in the City." Gamespot also has details on the handheld shortage.
Smart marketing? (Score:3, Interesting)
On one hand, it's good to create (even an illusional) high demand on DS, but on the other, it might have missed the golden opportunity to lock consumers in before other rivals starting coming up with new consoles/games.
I read no mention of increased production before the release, they just promised to ship 4 million units by end of March 2005. This could be a good thing, as rushed products are usually bad ideas.
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PS2 anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, atleast I have mine already preordered!
Re:With Nintendo... (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit
The Virtual Boy was their weakest console to date. It even caused the legend himself Gunpei Yokoi (inventor of original Game Boy, Metriod, nuff said) to leave Nintendo. And while the N64 did get a beating from PS-X, it had games the PS-X couldn't touch. (Which makes sense when you think about Nintendo as its own best developer.)
Re:Err...Umm...Uhh (Score:2, Interesting)
Prophecy.
What else is the wireless networking for? You sit and play in the food court, and then start seeing ads for Manchu Wok and Second Cup show up in the game.
If I was the right kind of person, that idea would give me a wet dream.
DS Shortage (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The system is launching Nov. 21st here and Dec. 2 in Japan. That's the closest international hardware launch Nintendo has ever done. I assume Japan will get unit priority after launch to make sure there are units on the shelf to combat Sony's PSP which launches Dec 12.
2. Hardware was finalized only a few months ago, which means production has only recently begun. Add to this that each unit has 2 LCD screens (one being a touch screen), and you can see a possible kink in the supply chain here.
So while shortages always generate a frenzy, and thus free marketing in a sense, I think the shortage here is genuine.
Also, it is unclear whether or not this will hurt Nintendo. With PSP on the way sometime next year, having an install base of 4-5 million never hurts. Look at the wonders that did for PS2.
Re:Feel the Magic XX/XY??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Err.. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not the official Gameboy replacement because Nintendo knows it's a risk. But it plays GBA titles along with DS ones, which makes it a de-facto GBA successor. Wireless capability, a fast ARM9 CPU, good battery life and the Nintendo brand add to the appeal - even though the quality of the launch lineup is uncertain.
But since the GBA compatibility is there, it's not as vital for the DS to blow people away with its launch titles either. As with most new consoles, it's the promise of future titles that gets people to buy them now.
Re:Technical merits? (Score:1, Interesting)
The GPU doesn't really have much capability. Although N's marketing claims it's able to do 150Kpolys/sec or so, that doesn't tell the whole story. The GPU is line-buffered instead of framebuffered (think of how the Atari 2600's graphics chip works, if that makes any sense to you), meaning that there are limits to how many polys can be on a single line, and you're pretty much locked into running at 60fps (so your theoretical maximum is 2500 polys per frame, and that's assuming you have them distributed evenly across the screen which you probably won't).
The touchscreen is pretty crappy, really. Lots of jitter and sample error, and it's designed to be touched with a finger, not a stylus (in the DS programmer guidelines they tell us that any UI which requires the use of a stylus will be rejected).
The second screen is a neat gimmick, but so far we've just gotten a bunch of eyestrain here from constantly having to glance up and down.
CPU is way too slow for DivX - main CPU is just a 66MHz ARM, and the second CPU (33MHz ARM) is dedicated to running the OS services. (Really wacky design.)
The 4MB of RAM is pretty small by PDA standards nowadays. Also, it uses a very proprietary memory card format for its ROM storage, though it has 32-bit addressing, and it'll probably be reverse-engineered quickly anyway. The hardware-level implementation is kinda crappy though, and although there's a basic MMU I don't know if it'll be useful enough for "real" Linux (uCLinux maybe though).
The wireless multiboot protocol is pretty simple, and I bet it'll get hacked pretty quickly. That'll be useful for turning the DS into a fancy terminal, at least, and might be good enough if you're okay with booting the DS in-range of an access point and only having 4MB total to work with.
On the other hand, it's very backwards-compatible with the GBA, and there are ways of making GBA cartridges boot into DS mode (since on the DS, the GBA slot will be used mostly as an expansion peripheral slot) so it'll probably not be too long before a functional homebrew OS will be available.
But if you want a PDA, I'd say to just get a Tungsten or Treo or whatever.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)