Handwriting Recognition on DS

JamesO writes "Zi Corporation has announced a licensing agreement with Nintendo that will allow developers to make use of handwriting recognition. PDAs have been offering handwriting recognition for some time and with the DS's touch screen it seemed inevitable that the console would eventually gain handwriting recognition technology. An agreement between Zi Corporation and Nintendo means that DS developers will be able to utilise Zi Decuma handwriting recognition technology when creating software for the handheld."

Expanding their demographic

[evil agent]

Nintendo will now be marketing this to very young kids, once games come out that can teach kids how to write. Of course, this will depend on how good the handwriting recognition will be. This could be really good news for the future of penmanship, or really bad.

AIN'T nuthin nobody can ever do . . . . .

[craker]

No matter how well you develop this thing, AIN'T nuthin nobody can ever do to figure out my chicken scratch. I can't even read it right after I write it. They made keyboards for a reason - geeks can't write.

The loss of Penmanship.

[nlinecomputers]

This could be really good news for the future of penmanship, or really bad.

Would that really be so awful. My penmanship was never good to begin with but I find that I so rarely sit down and write with a pen that the skill has badly deteriorated. More so with cursive then printing. I'm not sure that it is a skill we badly need any more in modern society.

Re:Nintendo is Desparate

[bugbeak]

The Nintendo DS is falling behind in sales against the superior Sony PSP.

From a Gamespot article: [gamespot.com]

"Recent sales figures provided by Dengeki Online revealed that cumulative shipments of the DS have nearly doubled those of the PSP in Japan since both launched in the country last December. As of the end of September 2005, Nintendo sold 3.2 million units of its DS handheld in Japan, while Sony Computer Entertainment shipped only 1.7 million units."

. Dependency on Cartridges: The age of the game cartridge has come and gone. The overwhelming success of the Sony Playstation and its "intellegent" use of CD-ROM based media effectively killed the cartridges as a viable media format for software.

Maybe for home consoles. But do you really want something portable that has moving parts? No matter how damn hard you try, you're going to treat anything handheld pretty badly.

3. Lack of Wi-Fi Internet Connectivity: The DS only allows for multiplayer games via its wi-fi connection with oher DS units but users cannot access public wi-fi drops like with the PSP and different PDA models. Because of this it would be impossible to sync data on the DS and a PC or another PDA because of this design.

And just how much more convenient is it to browse the web with a PSP? Ever heard of something called "input"? Besides, what's McDonald's for? Or the 50-dollar Mario Kart/Wi-Fi dongle package.

4, No Support for Storage Media: The DS does not natively support any form of flash media cards for storing data.

Just how "universal" is the so-called Universal Media Disc? Seen any blanks on sale recently?

5. Dominant Childen Marketing Angle:(not even going to bother with this one...)

Quantity doesn't really matter if Nintendo is the only one who can stay in black. So what if games are aimed for chilren? I don't think adults have gone "Eww" at Mario Party.

The company is too slow to change and adapt with the current market and current technology.

Who came up with Rumble? Who came up with the analog stick? Who came up with the shoulder buttons? Rather, just look at the fscking Revolution controller.

It's flaimbait, it's troll, but I bit.

Re:Nintendo is Desparate

[amdotaku]

It's pretty clear that Nintendo has somehow acquired a kiddie image. However, when I actually look at game lists for the PSP and DS and look at titles that at least have a hope of being "good", I don't really see much of a distinction between games that would be appealing to mature audiences between PSP and DS. If anything, the DS matches count and adds greater variety to the mix with games like Advance Wars that the PSP, sticking to more stereotypical genres like plain shooters and rpgs, just won't offer.

Also, I have no idea how much Nintendo is spending on their carts for DS, but its obviously less than $30 bucks a pop, being many games launch at that price. Also, I thought that solid state memory was the FUTURE of computing...in fact, how many times has this been brought up on /. in the past week?