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Portables (Games) Wireless Networking Hardware

Warp Pipe Group May Bring Online Gaming to DS 127

Posted by Zonk from the aetheric-plumbers-get-to-work dept.
dolphin558 writes "Warp Pipe may be in partnership with Nintendo to bring online gaming to the Nintendo DS! What's more, the project is supposed to add a "social aspect" to online gaming that hasn't been seen before. A press conference is scheduled for October 7th. I cannot wait!" This would seem to partially confirm earlier speculations, and partially explain Warp Pipe's decision earlier this year.
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Warp Pipe Group May Bring Online Gaming to DS More

Warp Pipe Group May Bring Online Gaming to DS

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  • added "social element" to online gaming, eh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RLiegh ( 247921 ) * on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:56AM (#10396069) Homepage Journal
    Can we say SHITCOCK [penny-arcade.com]?!?!!

  • Social Aspect (Score:5, Funny)

    by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:58AM (#10396099)
    What's more, the project is supposed to add a "social aspect" to online gaming that hasn't been seen before

    Ohhh, a "social aspect" to online gaming. I've never heard anybody pitch that before.
    • I wonder which "social aspect". Real life fights, stabbing and shootings?

    • Re:Social Aspect (Score:5, Funny)

      by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:06PM (#10396231)
      the project is supposed to add a "social aspect" to online gaming

      Yes, and perhaps the most egregious error was not looking at the lifestyles of video game fanatics. If they've chosen not to have social lives by now, why would they want to start one in a video game?

      • Duh (Score:5, Funny)

        by Mr Guy ( 547690 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:33PM (#10396592) Journal
        If they've chosen not to have social lives by now, why would they want to start one in a video game

        Because their guild demands it.

      • Re:Social Aspect (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:35PM (#10396623)
        Maybe nintendo isnt marketing to gaming fanatics. Maybe there is a large population of people who enjoy games, but dont make them a cental part of their lives. Just guessing here.
      • So true, that's what drove me away from all online games. I don't know, lots of people say they are shy and don't like to socialize in real life, but very communicative behind their screens because they're "hidden".
        It just doesn't work with me, i'm at least as shy in a chat than in rl, maybe even more. And when i'm playing other players generally disturb me more than anything else. In fact i prefer to socialize in real life, when i'm in front on my computer I generally want to be left alone. Those times w
        • A lot of people are very vocal online, and that actually makes it harder for the more hesitant people, because the loud ones tend to be such jackasses. Especially within a competitive game environment. I'm very comfortable chatting over AIM or IRC, to anyone, it's no big deal. But in an online game, I rarely say anything, because I don't want to inadvertantly get caught in some stupid and unamusing conversation.

          Although there are some slower paced games where the communication really is essential to long t
        • The key to good online gaming is to find a good group of people to play games with. Sometimes it takes a bit of work, but I've found that the reward exceeds the effort. I find it most enjoyable having a friendly "rival" to play with/against.

          I have left various online games permenantly in disgust over truly dispicable actions by other people or the communities that these games have. Every now and then I have a break from online gaming to recharge my batteries or I switch between XBOX Live and PC Online gam

      • egregious

        "You know you keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means." - Inego Montoya

      • Dip shit... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by gmezero ( 4448 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @04:26PM (#10399091) Homepage
        While that may be true for most X-Box gamers, most middle/high school kids don't live in a dark closet.

        My kids for instance, are very social with their gaming. My children and their friends have set up group gaming battles in Pokemon Stadium where everyone brings over their carts and plays against each others characters. They arrange trades, etc...

        One of my children bugged me constantly to try and convince me to let him take his Animal Crossing memory card to school so that he can take turns trading towns with a friend so they can visit each other's towns to trade fruit, etc... So on, and so forth...

        I for one am very excited about the added social dynamics to be introduced here. Any thing that get's kids out and engaged with their peers has a lot of positive potential.
    • Great, just what I need.. more "social aspects." As if I don't hear enough teenagers on Socom 2 telling everyone how high they are, or how much they hate something or other.

  • Sweet (Score:3, Funny)

    by lateralus_1024 ( 583730 ) <mattbaha@gmailRABBIT.com minus herbivore> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:59AM (#10396111)
    I knew there was a good reason for me to keep my dial up ISP.

  • Wait one second... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:01PM (#10396148)
    One second, wasn't warp pipe a small team of like 3 people that developed a little tunneling app to get Gamecube online? This is the whole team responsible for Nintendo's future online plans?

    Well then, looks like Nintendo's finally decided on a competitive online plan, one that will most surely rival the best offerings of Microsoft and Sony... hats off to them.

  • Social aspect that's never been seen? (Score:4, Informative)

    by MyDixieWrecked ( 548719 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:02PM (#10396158) Homepage Journal
    There's been a online gaming services with a social aspect. The only way this would make sense is if they meant "Never been seen in online console gaming"

    Sheesh, I remember The Sierra Network (then ImaginNation) which had chatrooms that you could invite people to play card games, checkers, chess, then later, red baron, boogers, and other more graphical games. There was even a dungeons and dragons-type world to play in and trade items, like everquest. ;)

    Man, I remember when I first got that service, I only had a 2400bps modem and couldn't play red baron since it required a 9600, but my dad got a 14.4, and man, that was SWEET.

    That service was my first contact with online-ness... chat, gaming and email. and that was in like 1990 or so.
    • There's been "social aspects" from the begining on online gaming. Later, Compuserve with Megawars and chatrooms, message boards, etc. Unless they've got some new kind of teledildonics hardware, it's been done before.
    • You're probably thinking of Shadow of Yserbius (1993).

      http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2000Q1/ms g0 0525.php

    • Wow, TSN!!! That network was amazing. I think my progress in online living was - TSN (which was bought out by AT&T??), regular local BBS's, and then the good underground sites which had all the pr0n and warez my childlike, innocent mind could handle, and finally irc, newsgroups, fidonet, and then the web. I sort of remember doing the whole, text based web thing, but thought it kind of sucked. And like you said, this was the early 90's when "going online" was, at best, a vague concept for the average

  • You can forget about meeting girls... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:02PM (#10396169)
    ...when the name of your social club is "Warp Pipe."

  • If I were at Sony... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by goMac2500 ( 741295 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:06PM (#10396232)
    I'd be quaking in my boots about now... Seriously, the opinion has really shifted. At first everyone thought the PSP would smackdown the DS. But Nintendo bit by bit is slowly showing us that there is far more to the DS than meets the eye. While Sony seems to have shown all their cards for the PSP, it looks like Nintendo has a whole lot up their sleeve.
    • While Sony seems to have shown all their cards for the PSP, it looks like Nintendo has a whole lot up their sleeve.

      This sort of reminds me of what happened a few years ago with PS2 and XBox. The PS2 came out first and got all the initial hype, but in the end people realized that the XBox was the more powerful, feature-rich system. I will not be suprised when the DS ends up being more popular than the PSP
      • I think the key here, though, despite all the DS and PSP features, will ultimately be games.

        Even if they're mostly ports, the PSP will more than likely have a solid library.

        Will the DS fare better than the GBA? I've got my fingers crossed that it does, but the GBA's absolutely awful game lineup left a bad taste in my mouth.

        I've got my fingers crossed that Square comes to their senses and does some sort of old-school Final Fantasy compilation for the DS. I'd love to see an update on FF1-6...
        • Will the DS fare better than the GBA? I've got my fingers crossed that it does, but the GBA's absolutely awful game lineup left a bad taste in my mouth.

          I've got my fingers crossed that Square comes to their senses and does some sort of old-school Final Fantasy compilation for the DS. I'd love to see an update on FF1-6...

          A Final Fantasy I & II compilation (with some new extras) is being released the week after the DS comes out.

          Of course, since they're not stupid it's for the GBA, not the DS. Unless
      • Ummmm there are over 50 million ps2s out there in the world at large. People may have realized that the xbox was the more powerful, feature-rich system but they bought a ps2. I have one of each (including game cube) so I don't really give a shit about anything but the games. Just finished fable on xbox, now I'm playing sly2 on ps2.
      • but in the end people realized that the XBox was the more powerful, feature-rich system.

        And yet most people I know still play a PS2. That's because no matter how "feature rich" a system is, it's only as good as it's games. And for me the PS2 shits all over the Xbox in terms of games (I pretty much like RPGs exclusively). PSP and DS will only be as successful as their games. DS has the potential to make GREAT games, but they need people to actually make the games.

    • Re:If I were at Sony... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tuffy ( 10202 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:42PM (#10396714) Homepage Journal
      Seriously, the opinion has really shifted. At first everyone thought the PSP would smackdown the DS. But Nintendo bit by bit is slowly showing us that there is far more to the DS than meets the eye.

      That's largely because the PSP looks more and more like the next Game Gear. It's more powerful than the DS, but it's also likely to be far more expensive. Now with the battery life problem being shifted to the developers, it's almost certain the DS' card media and low-power ARM chips will beat the PSP in that vital category.

      Add in the backwards compatibility and wireless networking and the DS looks like a portable juggernaut. The PSP might do well with Sony's muscle, but unless some new portable market has emerged I have a hard time believing it'll do better than second place.

    • For me, rather, it looks like it's pathetic writhe of Nintendo to team up with some shady tool developers, if this story is not a daydream of fanboys. Sony owns PS2, music, movie, TV and VAIO PC. Microsoft owns Windows, Office and Xbox Live. But Nintendo has only GBA. Nintendo is the most vulnerable among console makers, maybe tomorrow's SEGA.

      When it was the king of console, Nintendo wouldn't do things like that. Have things got been better, or am I just nostalgic about stubborn and relentless Big N?

      • Re:If I were at Sony... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <<stevehenderson> <at> <gmail.com>> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:58PM (#10396922)
        For me, rather, it looks like it's pathetic writhe of Nintendo to team up with some shady tool developers, if this story is not a daydream of fanboys

        Keep in mind that Nintendo knows what they are doing. There was a time when people thought "Who the F*CK is Retro Studios?" Then, WHAM, all of a sudden Metroid Prime comes out and everyone praises the decision by Nintendo to partner with them. If the WP devs have caught the eye of the big N then they are surely capable (and likely cheap enough to be a smart business decision).

      • Times change, dude (Score:2, Insightful)

        by BinaryOpty ( 736955 )
        All Nintendo does is gaming. Their entire life is based off of how well their gaming consoles do. You point out that Microsoft and Sony both have other departments that handle their guaranteed company profit, so both can do whatever they want and if it ends up bombing they can patch that wound up with wads of cash from their other divisions. Nintendo can't do that, so they need to make sure the DS is consumer friendly. Nintendo can't afford to pull a Virtual Boy now when they're in a tug of awar with Micros
      • What, all of a sudden being a monopoly is a good thing? (Kidding, kidding, I get it.)

        I do think it's true that Nintendo would never have done this five years ago. But the difference between now and then is that it's really a different company. A lot of new people in management, including a much more open-minded president. Yamauchi would never team up with these guys. Iwata would.
    • "The opinion has really shifted?". Opinion among who? The general public?

      The only company that should be worried here is Nintendo. They came out dead last in the next gen console wars, and their prospects don't look great on the future console versions. They only market they dominate is the portable gaming one, and now the company that beat them before is joining in.

      Sony should do well, but there's nothing from the DS that should really worry the PSP team. Just from the get go, people who already do porta

      • The only company that should be worried here is Nintendo. They came out dead last in the next gen console wars, and their prospects don't look great on the future console versions. They only market they dominate is the portable gaming one, and now the company that beat them before is joining in.

        Worldwide, the Gamecube has outsold the X-Box. Naturally, both trail the Playstation 2 by a wide margin. A lot of that success is because the Playstation 1 was such a smash hit and people wanted to bring their

      • Re:Sony has nothing to worry about (Score:5, Informative)

        by j0nb0y ( 107699 ) <`jonboy300' `at' `yahoo.com'> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:32PM (#10397293) Homepage
        They came out dead last in the next gen console wars

        If by dead last, you mean outselling the xbox, then yeah, you're right. But I believe most people reserver the term "dead last" to mean "sold the least consoles of any major game console," in which case, the xbox is in dead last. Worldwide, more gamecubes have been sold than xboxes. And keep in mind that the gamecube has been very profitable for Nintendo. They don't need to be in first place to keep making consoles and games.
        • Sorry... not true. Recent financial statements from both companies show the Xbox leading the Gamecube. Not by a great deal, but definitely leading worldwide.

          Nintendo's making more money, sure, but they're losing third-parties and multiplatform games sell like crap on that platform.
      • First off, its not like a monopoly in the handheld market is some great sin that is perpetuated on the massess by evil corporations. I mean come on. And besides,just because you root for a certain team doesn't mean your pro-monopoly. Also, whats this about no games for the DS? Nintendo has announced 40+ in their own dev houses and over 100 third party games in development.
        • A monopoly in any market is bad for consumers, if one company dominates a market, they have no incentive to lower prices. Economics 101.

          That there's Sony in there now, it's great news for everybody, except stockholders (either Sony's or Nintendo's). Again, you think the DS wasn't launched and priced like this as a response to the PSP? c'mon.

      • Re:Sony has nothing to worry about (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Actually, SEGA came dead last in the next gen console wars...

  • finally! (Score:5, Funny)

    by to_kallon ( 778547 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:08PM (#10396249)
    What's more, the project is supposed to add a "social aspect" to online gaming
    finally a way for me to play games and satisfy my social needs at the same time! i see no real reason for me to ever leave my room again. thankyou nintendo!

  • This is great news! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MysticalMatt517 ( 772389 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:09PM (#10396270) Homepage
    If you've been following Nintendo at all then you know that this is great news! The big N has been doing a lot lately to clean up their act (anyone watch their E3 breifing? Reggie rocks!). I fully expect Nintendo to be the dominant player duking it out with Microsoft in the next couple generations.

    Nintendo recognizes talent when they see it. The Warp Pipe folks created a thriving online community on the Nintendo Gamecube with little to no first party support. The DS has a lot of unique online potential due to its portability. I'm anxious to see what they come up with.
  • Nintendo has come out with a portable gaming machine. Nothing new there, but now, while out living my real life, I can play a video game where I live out my real life? I want a game modeled after reality, where in my game, I can see myself playing my game, while looking at myself playing my game. I think I get it now, I'm not real, I'm stuck in an infinite page fault.

  • with all those things cramped into the ds... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Savves ( 786087 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:19PM (#10396425)
    i still can't help but worry about battery life.

  • Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:35PM (#10396627) Journal
    They bring it online, we take it offline.

    God spoke to me:
    www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
  • I have a hard time believing this based on what we have seen from the Warp Pipe team. They produced an application that barely works (not fully their fault though). Why would Nintendo team up with some group that hasn't ever proven themself in the market?
    • Simple.. because they've proven themselves more than anyone else in the "market".. including Nintendo. These guys made something from really nothing at all. I'm sure these guys aren't the ONLY people involved, but who better to help out Nintendo with something than the ones who did it FIRST.
      • but still, isn't their 'product' they created from "nothing at all" just a lan bridge?

        (and more than that, wasn't there a totally similar application for use with xbox before them..)

        i wouldn't find it that strange if they hacked in some support for the ds though.
      • Problem, they only created a tunneling app. This has nothing to do with actually creating a large multiplayer network system. I could have used any other network tunneling system to get the same affect. Also, they weren't the "first". The Kai version of X-link was the first to offer Gamecube tunneling.

  • Respect (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ianmalcm ( 591345 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @12:43PM (#10396741)
    Whats next? Microsoft hiring bunnie? [hackingthexbox.com]

    I'm so glad to see respect from the institutional gaming companies shown toward the homebrew exploiters. People wanted Online gaming, Warp Pipe gave it, and Nintendo applauded with alleged business relations. We've come a long way from Bleem!

  • Nintendo already had something like this? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I remember before warp-pipe that NOJ had released a similar tool, possibly made in-house. Can anybody remember that?

    Another thing, when a project becomes closed source, what implication does it have on people who have source code from when it was open?
  • Zonk is at it again! He did it on PSP price story that turned out as a hoax shortly after!

    Why automatically "external source" = Nintendo? I posted a reply above without RTFA, am now very regretful that I didn't check it by myself first.
  • how much more of a social aspect do you need than to be ridiculed by 12 year olds screaming OMG NOOB WTF??!!

  • Other unofficial project under way (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jonny_eh ( 765306 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:01PM (#10396954)
    The folks over at http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/ [teamxlink.co.uk] are gonna attempt to create an online tunnel similar to their xbox/PS2 tunnels. It'll be interesting to see how the system compares to the one stated in the article. I'm assuming the Xlink system will be free (since it is for the xbox and PS2).

  • Guesses from a wifi background (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CaptCanuk ( 245649 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:02PM (#10396969) Journal
    Judging from some of the stuff at game cubicle forums, I have some guesses what they could do.

    They could use 802.11 and multiple DS's as repeaters. I bet the protocols for DS games won't take up much bandwidth so repeating 20 other packets won't be too bad. You could probably play against people X hops away.

    The other thing (something I've already done) is WiFi tracking. It would be relatively easy to do wifi tracking of people based on relative positioning and varying signal strengths. You could create a wifi based compass pointing you to anybody with a DS nearby (given 3 people with DS nearby). This could make for some interesting discovery ideas.

    There was some cellphone game that was big in Japan that was on Slashdot awhile back that used real places (based on cell tower "gps") to affect game play. This could be another application of a similar principle.

    This could be real fun if dealt with properly. I'd be impressed if they get this down right.
    • There was some cellphone game that was big in Japan that was on Slashdot awhile back that used real places (based on cell tower "gps") to affect game play. This could be another application of a similar principle.

      I remember reading about that... Now, playing a game on a cellphone doesn't seem like tons of fun to me, but these new phones are getting pretty powerful.

      Now, a MMORPG for the DS with some sort of feature like this could be tits, if it was done well. You'd have a much more capable system, and a

  • so you all better brush up on your Portuguese.

  • Free Publicity, Bad Article. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dryth ( 544014 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:56PM (#10397566)
    The article is good publicity for Warp Pipe. Which, as it clearly identifies, is now a business.

    However, the article basically takes some random actions on the part of the Warp Pipe team (i.e. posting images with a DS badly photoshopped into them), combines them with some random allusions and common assumptions (i.e. Marionette, online play), and then pulls a patent applying to the Gameboy Color out of nowhere.

    Out of that we get:
    1. Warp Pipe is now a business.
    2. A bunch of people know big things but aren't telling us, and won't even confirm that they know big things that they won't tell us.
    3. GBC Patent.
    4. This somehow correlates into the DS being online.

    So what do we get? Questionable rumors and what's probably hype over Warp Pipe's next project. I mean, is anyone else getting anything out of this beyond Warp Pipe publicity?

    Nothing against Warp Pipe, mind you, as they've done great things on the Gamecube. I find myself wondering if they're just using all this mysterious BS to simply hedge their bets (and bets that are theirs alone) should the DS not fit into their online schemes.
    • I found one comment particularly interesting -- still vague, but interesting:

      --
      ND: And what is the significance of the images that have been littered about the web since Monday? Is there any significance beyond the ambiguity?

      Chad: Yes. There is more than meets the eye. I think you would understand more if you knew my background. To put it bluntly, tunneling GameCubes is, by far, not my greatest achievement.
      --

      The only other project of Chad Paulson's I could track down was a large pro-file sharing movement
    • Well, also mentioned and I think important is the bit about 'buying games with your favorite little green symbol' or whatever. Basically, this seems like game developers will be participating in some sort of collective online play system.

      Based on the 'hints', what we know about the DS, Nintendo, and the Warp Pipe group, this is my theory. First, we know Nintendo has never really shown any strong support for internet gaming. They've never seemed to care if it was done (Phantasy Star Online, Warp Pipe project

  • So many whiners (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheBot ( 806046 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:29PM (#10397888) Journal
    There are so many of you that just put everything down, anyhting new that comes in, you have to put it down. Don't you guys know anything? Why are you so negative about these great things coming to our consoles, PCs, and handheld peripherals? Geez, I better not see any of you enjoying the PSP or DS or any console if you're going to be so negative about anything great that happens to it. Jesus, you'd think this was a 2Yr old Baby convention. Some get them their warm bottle of "shut the fuck up"
  • It's worth pointing out that the "patent" listed at the end of the article is fairly obviously bogus. Not only is it a patent for a technology which has existed for more than 20 years, and which already exists in three portable pure-gaming handhelds (the N-Gage, the GP32 with expansion pack, and the WonderSwan Advance,) but it doesn't even look remotely like a real US patent application.

    Also, whoever made that patent application isn't much of a researcher. In adding random information to the patent to tr
  • Hail /.'ers,
    The first I've heard about warp pipes involvement and the online aspects of the new DS was over at engadget. Once there i followed a few links to the gamecube forums and found a lot of really neat stuff and puzzles that Nintendo has released to the public on what the DS's online capabilities will be. The stuff is really cool, and I invite you all to check it out and let me know what you think.

    Link to puzzles and gamecube forum: http://www.gamecubicle.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=3035 / [gamecubicle.com]

    Im especia

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