Next Nintendo Handheld To Be Powered By NVIDIA's Tegra Chipset 216
Vigile writes "When you sell over 100 million handheld gaming systems, everyone wants to be involved in your success; just ask Nintendo. As a company with many different obstacles in its path, NVIDIA could definitely use the boost in revenues that would come from partnering with a company like Nintendo on a handheld system, and it looks like the Tegra processor will make that happen. The NVIDIA Tegra processor is an SoC that runs a set of ARM cores, a GeForce-based graphics core and an HD video processor capable of 1080p output that would definitely give the current Nintendo DS/DSi systems a performance boost in line with the Sony PSP. The 'Nintendo TS,' as it has been dubbed, will apparently be ready for a late winter 2010 release and should put a spark in the mobile gaming market and give Nintendo's developers the power to bring higher quality games to the platform."
Cell (Score:3, Interesting)
Open it, and make it a phone (Score:2, Interesting)
Portable game systems are now competing with cell phones. Nintendo needs to realize that for their next portable game system or it will be limited to elementary and middle school kids. Beyond that age, they want a PDA / cell phone.
Granted, there are some big limitations to a cell phone as a gaming platform. The DS and DSi are much cheaper than the iPhone or even the iPod touch, and they have better control inputs. But that may change with future phones, especially Android phones.
The next DS also needs to be open to developers. That is a huge market that Nintendo missed. I know kids who have hacked DS's because they not only get games, but they get a scheduler, dictionary, and Wikipedia. Had Nintendo sold basic PDA functionality then the DS would have widened it's market. It is amazing how big the homebrew community is. I doubt that the homebrew community will spend the effort to reverse-engineer the next Nintendo hand-held when they could buy a cheap, open cell phone for the same price.
We are really seeing hand-held device convergence. I know people who don't carry a watch any longer because they have a cell phone. Nintendo needs to widen their thinking.
Zune HD has the Tegra (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Open it, and make it a phone (Score:2, Interesting)
Nintendo needs to widen their thinking.
I think the DSi proves that they have already begun to do so. If any of the three big game companies (Nintendo, Sony & Microsoft) have proven that they can reach the casual/mainstream audience, it's Nintendo. All they really have left to do is cut out their idiotic fear of the internet.
Re:But will it run Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
If it ever ends up coming out.
Their status page [openpandora.org] looks pretty close. This thing actually sounds very cool, a sort of netbook (plus gaming hand held!) that a linux geek would be able to settle for. The type of thing that still works to lounge around in bed on a winter morning and just cruise the net. Thanks to gp for mentioning this as I had not heard of it, yet had considered getting the previous GP2X in the past. Does anyone have an idea of the cost of this thing?
Wait, you mean... (Score:3, Interesting)
For once I can play a 3D game on a Nintendo portable and not be limited to 2000 polygons in a scene, and not be limited to shitty point-sample for texture filtering?
Hurray, we can finally have REAL 3D games on the DS, instead of crappy-looking 2D/3D hybrids!
The power consumption is also quite reasonable (Zune HD can do 8.5 hours video playback, and that stresses the GPU core and OLED screen), so it sounds plausible for Nintendo to sign-on.
Never (Score:3, Interesting)
The Wii will never have 1080p; Nintendo will make you buy the next console for that.