Free 3G Wireless For Nintendo's Next Handheld? 110
itwbennett writes "'Nintendo is feeling the sting of competition from the iPhone,' writes Peter Smith in a recent post. 'At least, that's the feeling one gets when reading Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's thoughts on the future of Nintendo handhelds. According to a Financial Times piece, Iwata suggests the next Nintendo handheld (and to be clear, he isn't talking about the big screen DS launching in Japan next month) might include free 3G wireless, much like the Amazon Kindle does. The challenge is to offer the immediacy of downloading an inexpensive new game, anywhere, anytime, without forcing the user into some kind of monthly data plan.' From the FT piece: 'Only people who can pay thousands of yen a month [in mobile phone subscriptions] can be iPhone customers. That doesn't fit Nintendo customers because we make amusement products,' Mr Iwata said."
There's already the DSi Shop (Score:3, Informative)
One of the biggest problems I've had with the Nintendo systems is that you either have to carry around a ton of cartridges in order to play
Not on the DSi. It has a 256 MB microSD card soldered onto the motherboard for storing apps downloaded from the DSi Shop. The only thing that the article would change is that you don't have to walk to a restaurant to buy new apps.
The ability to DL a new game on the fly
Except 3G doesn't work so well on a jet airliner: too many handoffs per minute. You'd have to use the onboard Wi-Fi, which airlines would likely price for executives of medium to large businesses. And at that point, you could just use the DSi Shop.
Size of Wii Shop Channel games (Score:5, Informative)
Games on the other hand can be quite large
How large? Classic NES, Super NES, Game Boy, and Game Boy Color games are 4 MiB or less (with a handful of exceptions). Even a DS-native game like Animal Crossing: Wild World is only 32 MiB. Compare that to the 256 MB of internal memory on a DSi or the 4 GB card in the DSi's SDHC slot.
more powerful hardware
Wii has more powerful hardware than the DS, but Wii Shop Channel games still weigh in less than 48 MB. (There are roughly eight "blocks" in 1 MB.)
Can Nintendo really front the costs to provide access to this service without increasing game price?
Full-size games cost $30 to $40 in the United States, partly due to the cost of making and shipping Game Cards. Do you think the 3G airtime to download, say, a 64 MB game will cost more than making and shipping a Game Card?
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:3, Informative)
A 3G chip adds manufacturing cost, won't play well in all countries (look at how the kindle has had functionality removed outside the US), can be incredibly slow depending on the network and location, will be incredibly expensive for the 500mb+ downloads that will probably make up DS2 games...
Go back and read tepples' post about the typical size of current Nintendo games...
Current DS games are only around 32MB. Wii Ware games tend to be around 50MB. Do you really think the games in Nintendo's next handheld are going to be over ten times that size?