New Nintendo DS to Include Camera, Music 261
BobB-nw writes "Watch out Apple, here comes Nintendo. Nintendo plans to launch a new version of its popular DS portable gaming device with a camera and music player function, according to a report in the Sunday edition of The Nikkei Business Daily. The new version will have better wireless capability for connecting to the Internet and will cost under $189, the report said. It will be offered first in Japan, it said. The DS first went on sale in 2004, and a second version, called the DS Lite, debuted two years later in 2006. Both have sold extremely well, with worldwide sales of the DS products at 77.5 million units as of the end of June this year."
Gameboy DS is a misnomer (Score:5, Informative)
Calling the new DS "Gameboy DS" is incorrect. The GameBoy line of portables ended with the GameBoy Advance. The DS is known simply as the "Nintendo DS".
DSOrganize much? (Score:5, Informative)
Most DS games have music, so I really don't see myself listening to different music while playing a game on the DS. Likewise, unless the DS will include an address book, calendar, e-mail, scientific calculator and web browser on board
You just described the feature set of DSOrganize 3.1129, a very popular homebrew application for the Nintendo DS.
WPA (Score:3, Informative)
Hopefully that means WPA capability (finally...)
Probably not to existing games. WPA would need driver support, and the Wi-Fi driver is part of the game, not the DS firmware.
But in my opinion, WEP + MAC filtering is good enough. It won't prevent everyone from breaking into your network, but it still establishes an attacker's intent [wikipedia.org] to break into your network and diverts wardrivers to your neighbor's open network.
Re:To be honest... (Score:5, Informative)
I know there is a homebrew group of people who are working on such things, but it seems like another giant pain. I don't have time to tinker.
You don't have to tinker much to run homebrew:
As far as anyone can tell, this rumored product is Nintendo's attempt to kill the market for microSD adapters that are also capable of running unlawful copies of DS games.
Re:To be honest... (Score:3, Informative)
The DS has 4MB of RAM. That's enough for productivity apps. Homebrew productivity apps also have access to the filesystem on the MicroSD card, so they can swap or do standard file I/O if they need it. Speed to/from the SD card is quite reasonable for a handheld platform like the DS.
The web browser is a different animal, the modern web page uses a lot of storage. I think the RAM cart is 16MB. I'm sure some of that is used for a page cache to make performance reasonable.
Re:To be honest... (Score:2, Informative)
And yet this is not relevant when discussing the DS proper, as Nintendo will not be making an SD card slot equipped cartridge available. Even if the unit has 4MB of RAM, it will be inherently limited vs. a PDA for a number of things:
1. Storage - As I said, Nintendo won't release a device with a PC-Compatible memory card slot for obvious reasons.
2. Connectivity - While the unit has Wifi, they generally only allow connections to their matchup service. I don't see Nintendo allowing the release of PDA software that syncs with a PC, again for obvious reasons.
Re:Gameboy DS is a misnomer (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the Gameboy Micro was the last Gameboy.
Nintendo have already replied to the rumor (Score:5, Informative)
with a 'no comment' style reply, here:
http://kotaku.com/5056082/nintendo-on-that-new-ds-rumor [kotaku.com]
Re:Don't stop there... (Score:1, Informative)
You mean like this?
http://www.dslinux.org
Re:Cool (Score:4, Informative)
FYI, Nintendo has officially responded [kotaku.com] to this rumor:
Hmm... playing close to their chest, aren't they?
Re:Color me skeptical. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:To be honest... (Score:3, Informative)
Time for a little history lesson... (Score:3, Informative)
I agree with you. As the DS isn't forced to be connected to the internet all the time like the Wii or XBox 360, there's little chance that a user would install a console firmware update that would brick a hacked firmware or disable Slot1/2 card. So they use the carrot instead of the stick - new shiny carrot vs your old machine that can play homebrew/backup roms but has poor wifi and no camera...
OK, technically the Wii isn't "forced" to be connected to the internet all the time... You always have the option of not connecting the thing to your router - and if you do that, games will still just work. To my knowledge Nintendo doesn't push out firmware updates, either - they send you mails, suggesting you upgrade firmware, but that's it...
Now, regarding the matter of DS updates bricking DSes - it has happened before.
Specifically, old versions of FlashMe (from before Mario Kart DS, the first DS game with internet connectivity) wrote some of its own code into regions of flash ROM which would later be used by Ninteno Wi-Fi connection to store router settings and so on. So once the user booted up a game with Nintendo Wi-Fi support and configured their internet connection, their DS would be bricked. (Fortunately, FlashMe included a contingency that allowed people to re-flash their DSes even after something like this...)
Of course, I don't think it's entirely fair to say that's Nintendo's fault. I mean, after all, nobody told Flashme they could use that area of ROM...
Re:Arrr 4 (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty much. I can't think of any of them having bought a game since getting an R4. And none of them except me even uses any homebrew. One of my friends tried out a homebrew rhythm game, but wasn't impressed. I, on the other hand, have tons of homebrew that I use regularly. It wasn't the sole reason that I bought the R4, however, and anybody who thinks that most people who buy R4s DON'T use them to pirate games is kidding themselves.
How to keep flash cards from booting (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think we'll see a DS refresh breaking any Slot-1 flashcarts, unless they also want to break compatibility with existing DS games.
Imagine the new DS taking a checksum of the ARM7 and ARM9 binaries from the inserted Game Card. The firmware has a list of the SHA-1 values of the first 3,000 or so releases. All releases after that are digitally signed with RSA in much the same way as DS Download Play clients and DS Download Station demos. So when the new DS loads a card, it'll take the SHA-1 as if it were a DS Download Play game. If it checks out against the signature, good. If the SHA-1 is on the whitelist, good. Otherwise, put "An Option Card is inserted" at the top of the touch screen instead of booting the card. Flash cards will fail to verify in exactly this way.
The RSA key for the DS has been known for a while now
GBATEK [emubase.de] documents that while DS Download Play clients are signed, DS Game Cards are not. They use a different algorithm based on Blowfish, and this is what flash cards emulate. Adding RSA to new releases and whitelisting legacy releases would block flash cards from booting
Re:To kill demand for R4, SuperCard, M3, CycloDS, (Score:2, Informative)
The secret key for the copy protection is known
The Blowfish key is known. But the other key isn't, which could allow for the system that I described in another post [slashdot.org].