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."
I wonder if... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know why Apple needs to worry (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like to see more productivity apps for the DS. My son cracked the case of his DS, and I tried fixing it with a new case. It worked, but I guess I didn't plug in the secondary video cable too well because it acts all wonky sometimes; so I got him a new one and kept the old one for myself.
But I don't use it at all (it's stable when you are... it'd go wonky in the car when we hit a bump or something). I don't have any electronic organizers or anything, so I'd really like to see some productivity apps for it. I mean, it's got wifi and everything built in, it seems you should be able to do email, address books, calendars...
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. It's odd that Nintendo didn't see fit to release something along those lines themselves.
Re:Gameboy DS is a misnomer (Score:5, Interesting)
They threw Game Boy Advance backwards compatibility in there, though. If they were trying to call it something besides a Game Boy (successor), they sure stirred up a lot of confusion with that move.
Re:I wonder if... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cool (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Color me skeptical. (Score:5, Interesting)
If it has WPA support, I'll be upgrading my current DS the day that I can. I haven't yet used the online mode because I don't want to downgrade the security on my AP to WEP.
Re:Cool (Score:4, Interesting)
From my knowledge, when you buy a game for your iPod, it's tied to that hardware unit, and you can't transfer it to a new iPod.
Yes you can. The iPod/iPhone apps are tied to your iTunes account and not the devices themselves. You can sync multiple devices with one account.
My wife and I each have an iPhone. Whatever apps I buy for my phone are also available on hers. Everything is a two-for-one deal!
Re:Color me skeptical. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cool (Score:3, Interesting)
When a Japanese business rag states something as a fact, you can be pretty sure they have good sources on it. Japanese papers don't play fast and loose with the truth just to sell a few extra copies.
Re:Gameboy DS is a misnomer (Score:3, Interesting)
GameBoy has connotations of a (male) child's toy.
I know you're right, but when my son upgraded to a DS he let us take his GBA; I replaced the cover with a pink one we ordered off ebay (and a new battery, as well), and gave it my daughter as a "GameGirl."
I used my DS as a mp3 player for a year (Score:1, Interesting)
Until I wasn't able to locate 1GB SD cards anymore, I used my NDS with a Nintendo authorized PlayYan. If you close the screen, it lasts for 20 hours on a NDS Lite. It literately lasts longer than any other device I have that can play mp3's. My N95 lasts 5 hours tops.
Reason? The playyan uses a lower power hardware decoder. The same chip used in the iPod If I recall correctly. The playyan also plays mp4 video, but I didn't really make good use of this as the battery life was only about 6 hours on video, and the GBA resolution kinda made watching anything on it silly when my commute is between 10 and 30 minutes.
If they really wanted to 'sell' it to geeks and made it viable for many, they should include a second game card slot and a regular SDHC micro slot. Yes four slots. Reason:
1) One application cart, eg Opera+Skype
2) One game cart
3) One SDHC micro slot for reading mp3's and storing contacts from Skype or VoIP software and storing photos from the camera.
4) One GBA slot for the same purpose as before.
Nintendo also needs to change it's attitude to piracy, the SDHC card should be able to download from the Nintendo virtual console anything that the user purchased for their Wii, or saved to the SDHC card with the Wii, or download from the Wii to the NDS. Including contacts. To prevent the piracy of the games or using pirated games it should only play games that are digitally signed, and only allow signed games to write to the flash.
Unsigned games (eg homebrew), as much as people want to say people do this, far more people use it for piracy. A workaround for this is to create a hash for the game, and have the Wii or directly the Nintendo store check the rom image. If it's not in the database, it won't sign it. If it's a homebrew (eg submitted to Nintendo for inclusion on it's store, much like Wiiware) that wasn't downloaded from the Nintendo store and signed, it won't run it. This would also allow for the game to be updated by the NDS/Nintendo Store. By offering a legitimate way to put homebrew on the NDS, there is no use for the flash carts.
I somehow doubt Nintendo reads slashdot, and Nintendo has classically ignored wanted features until they have become commodity in other devices and cheap to do on their own.
May actually be a real reason (Score:3, Interesting)
You joke, but actually you're onto something :
And an NES emulator
Once an SDK appears for whatever the platfrom, in addition to enabling MP3 support and running Linux (if not already supported, otherwise replace with *BSD), what are the two next thing that are compiled on absolutely whatever device ?
- A port of Doom/Quake/Duke/Unreal/whatever latest opensource is still within hardware perfs.
- A port of ZSnes/Gens/Mame/whatever emulator fits into the perfs of the machine.
(And only the perfs, even if the hardware control scheme lacks any decent input : Having only touch screens and accelerometers hasn't stopped the OpenMoko and the iPhone receiving ports of Doom. At least at some future point in time, the OpenMoko would probably get gamepad-over-bluetooth [ubergizmo.com] support like PalmOS device).
No single device has ever made an exception. Even RockBox has emulators.
What makes things worse is, whereas BlackBerrys have been a niche market and Palms are dying, iPhone is going to be a mass consumed accessory.
And that may piss off Nintendo, because every game ran on an emulator is one less <strike>pigeon</strike> consumer, who may have had a chance of rebuying once-again all the classics.
The old (suit-happy) Nintendo would probably have tried suing the emulators into disappearance (and may have had some limited success given Apple totalitarian control of app distribution). But since then they have changed and partly recognized potential market for emulation (see their Wii's Virtual Console).
Except the DS to follow these trends and some future version starting to feature emulators with downloadable-over-Wifi legal ROMs from their online store (or sync-able with the home Wii).
In that circumstances, PDAs running emulators are in direct concurrence with their products.
And as such, any sexy feature that they add to their DS to make it more looking like a PDA, is one feature less that will encourage people to get PDAs/SmartPhone, and instead encourages them to stay with simplier featurephone running Java (and unable to run a decent emulator, at least for some time).
The whole may simply a defence to make players less compelled to buy a device that will on the long term, turn out to be competitor.
Re:Gameboy DS is a misnomer (Score:3, Interesting)
As opposed to Xbox?
Re:To be honest... (Score:3, Interesting)
With an M3 Real you can use microSDHC cards. I have just over 60 games on mine and that takes up 2.89 GB. If I didn't have a 6GB card, I'd have to cut a lot and wouldn't have much room for music and movies OR I'd have to have a bunch of cards to swap around.
I'd recommend at least 6GB if you want to stick something in there and not have to bother with swapping the card (mine is a little finicky and I have to reseat it a couple times for any swap, so I don't care to do it if I don't have to).