Can Nintendo Really Be Planning Another DS Variant? 187
itwbennett writes "'There was a lot of talk yesterday about an article in the Japanese publication Nikkei which claimed that Nintendo was readying a new iteration of its DS line of handheld gaming systems,' writes blogger Peter Smith. 'The report claims the new unit will have 4" screens (the current unit has 3.25" screens) and is designed for older gamers who have trouble seeing the small screens of the current DSi. This new model is otherwise identical to the existing DSi and will ship by end of year in Japan.' As an 'older gamer' himself, Smith calls on Nintendo to stop this annual upgrade madness and do something truly innovative for a change, and he calls on gamers to put some pressure on Nintendo and not buy the new DS."
Finally ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is there any competition? (Score:2, Interesting)
There is nothing wrong with the DS as is, I just wish there was a way to hook it to my TV.
Don't Pull a Sega. (Score:4, Interesting)
I would really like if you didn't do this, but as long as its still compatible you should be ok. You were there when Sega pulled the constant hardware change and killed their own hardware sector. I kinda like you Nintendo so keep it compatible and the bitching will be a minimum.
Your Fan,
bertoelcon
Re:Is there any competition? (Score:2, Interesting)
There was a post earlier here on Slashdot about the rumored follow up using Tegra. [slashdot.org]
In the case of this "news" item I don't see why we are supposed to give a shit about this bloggers opinion. It's not like they are forcing someone to buy it and not everyone buy each new iteration of the DS. I think it's rather good that they fix issues and improve it as much as they can. The DSi added more features which somewhat hurt the old DS but except that to just improve it is just fine. The old ones don't get worse because there exist better versions. Sure it's not much but that's kinda the thing, they don't WANT it to break compatibility so he should stop whining.
Sooner or later of course they will release a new system to, but if they made that every year there wouldn't be so many games and people would complain how they had to buy a new one all the time and how Nintendo abandoned their old system and users.
And there ARE competition. The PSP is succesful, the phones have gained the touchscreen capabilities of the DS and probably even come with more powerful hardware and of course if Nintendo slack off to much they will lose.
It's not competing with themselves, the DS was kinda weak hardware wise when it arrived, heck it was even considered a third line of consoles beside the Gameboy and the stationary consoles. Most likely more of "I wonder if this would work on the market, but well, better save the Gameboy brand just in case .."
Sure it seem to have replaced the Gameboy line by now but anyway. Maybe it was so weak because it was more of a test rather than supposed to be the next Gameboy from the beginning?
The DS _IS_ limited, and would serve well being more powerful (yes I do have one ..)
And I think Microsoft made money on the Xbox since some time to, don't remember when I read it.
At some time people WON'T keep buying it which is freaking obvious so that's why they should bother with it. Haven't they already sold to like 1/5 of the people in Japan? Maybe the rest don't care much for it? So how are they supposed to sell more? If they released a new one of course more people would start buying that one.
Re:Is there any competition? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the sound capabilities leaves a lot to wish for.
I think game songs do to (guess they use sampled music but don't have much space so it gets very repetive.)
Better speakers and higher quality sound output would be good to.
Resolution is decent but could be better.
3D capability leaves a lot to wish for.
Old ones (pre-DSi) didn't even do WPA.
The DS lite (which plenty of us have bought ..) don't do diagonal upper-right movements very well.
Of course lots could be improved.
Personally I would from the beginning had preferred one screen with the total resolution of the current two there the developers themselves could had decided how they wanted to use it. And of course better 3D capabilities.
Also in the case of the DSi I guess one could argue that at least the loss of the GBA slot is something "wrong" with it. That and the very high price, the DS has been around for like 5 years but still kinda cost as much since each new version starts off at a slightly higher price the the current one.
Re:For a Change? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen so many console wars in various forums that I just can't tell anymore.
Read before you buy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Is there any competition? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the sound capabilities leaves a lot to wish for.
The DSi has a much improved DAC, allows 16 simultaneous mono voices in hardware (I think, it could be 8 mono)
3D capability leaves a lot to wish for.
True, but it was done this way due to battery reasons. When someone writes a software renderer for DSi, we'll likely see a pretty big jump in graphics (for DSi only)
The DS lite (which plenty of us have bought ..) don't do diagonal upper-right movements very well.
What?
Personally I would from the beginning had preferred one screen with the total resolution of the current two there the developers themselves could had decided how they wanted to use it. And of course better 3D capabilities.
Then you would have a PSP. The second screen is an artifact of the design of the system. I think Nintendo really wanted a clamshell, because it makes the system far more portable. You don't need a case, and can slip one into your pocket without ruining the screen. I own a DS, DSi, and PSP. The PSP remains at home, while the DSi comes with me wherever I go. Reason being that it doesn't require a case, and is a good deal smaller.
Also in the case of the DSi I guess one could argue that at least the loss of the GBA slot is something "wrong" with it. That and the very high price, the DS has been around for like 5 years but still kinda cost as much since each new version starts off at a slightly higher price the the current one.
DSi is Nintendo's new handheld. It has 4x the power of the DS, and is a significantly better system in every way. It's a fair price to pay for the new system. The problem is the lack of DSi exclusive games, because Nintendo is currently selling it as a new DS. This is really not the case. Next year, we will likely see the rise of the DSi, after there's an established market. I think Nintendo is just rolling it out slowly because they don't need to rush, and they don't want people to feel cheated.
DS Improvements a good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
The DS is an excellent piece of equipment. It's small, but not too small. It's light, but heavy enough to be comfortable. It has great battery life and even my original Nintendo DS (pre-lite) still functions for hours on a single charge.
If I were to make any improvements to the DS, I would make the charger USB based and make it so that save games and such could be backed up similar to the iPhone.
There is a fantastic software library for the DS with hundreds if not thousands of titles. The unit still plays Gameboy Advance games and was even quite entertaining to play guitar hero on.
In fact, game play on the DS is wonderful. I've never stopped enjoying playing on the unit. From Mario to Final Fantasy it's an awesome unit. What I'm most surprised about is that no one has developed a gyro/motion sensor that would fit into the advance cartridge slot to make games more Wii like.
The only thing that a "Revolutionary New Design" would bring would be the need to buy higher resolution versions of the same titles. Fact is, for the screen size, the games are more than good enough already. Using classic address hacking methods (similar to the original 8086 LIM/EMS extensions) it's possible to make games bigger and bigger.
I haven't felt an urge to buy a DSi since it doesn't appear to offer anything over what I already have. It might be different if the game store were more like Apple's so that I could install the same game on both of my kids' devices, but for now, switching game cards between devices is good enough.
The Playstation Portable is a much more advanced device and still to this day, I've yet to see any games for it that make me say "Wow I need that". I'm sure that Nintendo could probably build a market for new games on a new device, but really, what's the point? Nintendo makes far more money off of licensing than off of the console. The more games that get sold, the more they make. The console can actually be sold at a loss (like they would actually need to hehe) and they'd still get rich.
I hope that if they ever do come out with a successor to the DS, they make it so that DS games play without any problems. I think if it came down to choosing a new Nintendo device which couldn't play the old games, I'd just get the kids iPod Touches instead.
Now all we need is Pokemon or Bakugan for iPhone.
Re:Absolutely. (Score:2, Interesting)
Couldn't we just call slashdot "slashblog", and call the commentors "co-bloggers"? That way all our opinions would become newsworthy too.
Re:The real problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
You're doing it wrong. I have big hands, and thick thumbs (Dutch/Indian), and I have no trouble using the DS Lite. In fact, if the A/B/X/Y buttons were further apart, I would find it hard to play games that require you to hold one button while tapping another, or rolling between buttons (e.g. Yoshi's Island). I thing the key is that you have use the buttons in the same way as you use the D-pad: by rolling your thumb from the central position.
Re:Good Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I know, portables are supposed to be small... but the original DSi has a footprint barely bigger than an Atari joystick! It looks more fragile than it probably is...
Increasing the screen size will increase the size of a DSi without increasing the depth. This will be good.
Re:Err, why? (Score:3, Interesting)
These people aren't going to buy the DSi, both because unlike the DS Fat to DS Lite transition the new console isn't clearly better for their needs (the Lite's screens were much better, and it was actually pocketable), and because they resent the upgrade treadmill.
Very true. Let's look back at the Nintendo Handhelds from the beginning.
Game and watch. Simple, but they played only one game.
Gameboy. A reasonably versatile little platform. It was not as powerful as some rivals, with only mono speaker (but stereo headphone support), had only four shades of grey on the screen, and required four AA bateries.
Next up we had the Gameboy pocket. Based on the next generation of circuit components, this was much smaller than its predecessor, and provided similar battery life using only 2 AA batteries, but was otherwise similar. There was no reason to upgrade existing Gameboys unless the changes interested you. To the best of my knowledge it was not possible for a game to detect the difference between the two in any supported manner (although information may have leaked from some timing edge cases.)
The Gameboy lite was an interesting upgrade that came next, but was japan only. Once again from the game side, this was identical to the original gameboy.
The Gameboy Color was the first one different from game's perspective. This one would be a necessary upgrade to play some of the latest games, but had perfect backwards compatibility, and supported games that would run on the original with additional pallet information or even additional features on the GBC. The full feature set was available in GBC only games. In theory, a color/regular cart could have used all the GBC's features when available, but only a subset was used, specifically, double speed mode and full set of pallets was not used, as those could not be used with only simple branching to skip the GBC only parts on the original GB, so code path duplication would be needed. Also any well made GBC only game would still run on the original GB, if you could get in in the cartirdge slot, but would simply display a warning that the game was GBC only.
Nobody complained about the GBC too much, because it was a definite upgrade from the old system.
Next we got the GBA. Once again a definite upgrade so there were few complaints, although the backwards compatibility was a bit less then it could have been, with a few games having small issues, and the lack of the GBC's IR port. The shoulder buttons, larger screen, and significant processor improvements made this a much better machine than its predecessors.
We get the GBA-SP. The biggest complaints here were about some flaws in the GBA-SP itself, like no headphone port without adapter. It was completely compatible with the GBA, and the difference could not be detected in software. People generally did not complain because there was no reason to upgrade unless you wanted the light, or built-in rechargable battery. The old ones worked just fine for everything.
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Now we reach the end of the traditional upgrades where there were few to no complaints. most were either optional, being indistinguishable from software, or were significant improvements. Backwards campatibility was lacking a bit, in a few spots, but only with a really small number of games, or if
We get the DS. This is introduced as a third prong, and dropped backwards compatibility with everything but the Gameboy Advanced. The GBA games had pretty good compatibilily, but slightly worse than the GBC->GBA transition, and the lack of support for link cables was a real killer. So it should not be viewed as a GBA replacement, but a new console with the possibilty to play some old games, communicate with old games though editing the game's savefiles, or use the second port for expansions.
The DS-lite came out, to only limited complaints, most about the GBA carts and accessories sticking out. It was fully compatible with the existing DS in both directions