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Nintendo Businesses Portables (Games) Wireless Networking

Nintendo DS Sees Voice-Chat, Demo Stations 37

Posted by Zonk from the ds-gets-whole-new-bag dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing, Metroid Prime will include the ability to voice chat with other players before and after games (not during). Granted, the PSP's version of SOCOM allows for in-game chat, but this certainly is the first step." They're also going to be setting up demo download stations in retail stores, as reported in a DS Fanboy post. More details also available at the Game|Life Blog.
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Nintendo DS Sees Voice-Chat, Demo Stations More

Nintendo DS Sees Voice-Chat, Demo Stations

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  • Why not IN-GAME? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rwven ( 663186 )
    Does anyone have a reason why they can't talking while playing? Seems to me that it wouldnt have been harder to implement it a little further... *confused*

    I guess talking BEFORE and AFTER a game is kinda pointless. Just pick up the dang phone and call them...or talk across the room you're probably both going to be sitting in anyway.

    • Re:Why not IN-GAME? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hattig ( 47930 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @04:56PM (#14681325) Journal
      Probably because audio data needs to be compressed before sending it, which requires CPU time, even for basic audio compression algorithms. The DS may have two processors, but neither is that fast, and I bet that even basic compression would use up significant CPU time.

      Sure, I bet they're recording in mono 8-bit at 22kHz, so the datarate is only 22kB/s, but with a couple of people that could saturate the uplink of many home broadband connections even without the gameplay traffic. Zap in some simple voice compression and you've got a ~4kB/s data stream, much more convenient.
      • While I'm sure technical issues are also involved, I'd be willing to bet another factor is the 'smack talk' gamers seem to love so much. If you've ever played Halo 2 on Xbox Live, you'll be intimately familiar with the levels of inarticulate garbage people can spew while trying to win. Nintendo is, and always will be, a company that focuses on family. The only way you can interact in Mario Kart is by *actually* racing. Put up or shut up, so to speak. I find it interesting they're even allowing voice chat be

    • Re:Why not IN-GAME? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Iscariot_ ( 166362 )
      For bandwidth and processing reasons. I'm sure they'll be using a good % of the power of the DS for the game which leaves little or none left over to do voice in game. There's also bandwidth to be concerned about as I believe the DS is only capable of 2Mbps not 11 Mbps.

      • Re:Why not IN-GAME? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by rwven ( 663186 )
        Processing power would have to be it. Very few multiplayer games exceed 10-15kbps bandwidth usage during online play. That leaves a LOT of open bandwidth for sound....
    • I guess talking BEFORE and AFTER a game is kinda pointless.

      Hrm.... Kind of like sex.
      • While I know you're being flippant, this comment got me thinking...

        We don't necessarily know what all they've added to Hunters in the WiFi-upgrade bonus round. What if they added co-op multi-play? Two (or more) stealth bounty hunters preparing for a mission would necessitate communication before-hand, especially if conditions (read: processing power, which I'm certain is the real reason there's no in-game chat) dictate radio-silence whilst fighting. Chat after would allow you to hash over what went right
    • I like how morons with mod points go through here and mark perfectly legit posts as trolls.

  • Finally (Score:3, Informative)

    by GammaKitsune ( 826576 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @05:20PM (#14681609)
    I was wondering when we would see demo kiosks in the US. Seems like something they should have implemented a long time ago... Ah well, better late than never.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • you don't know what the parent is talking about then. See, in Japan they have these kiosks where you can simply open your DS, select "DS Download Play," and look for these types of transmissions. They have been around for about a year in Japan, giving demos and, in the case of Band Brothers, additional content.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • You're still not getting it.

            DS has had wireless play since it was released. Super Mario DS, first game out for it, had some wireless minigame or something. These kiosks are to download data that is stored on the kiosk itself. At no point, when using the download kiosk, do you actually go on the internet. It's totally local wireless, the same as what is available in nearly every DS game, even the one's without WiFi play.

            In fact, since Mario Kart DS was released in the US less than a month after it's

  • Very cool. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kerrle ( 810808 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @05:50PM (#14681939) Journal
    Even if it is a bit limited, this is still a great move.

    It also shows that Nintendo is willing to expand on what they originally offered with their Wifi service.

    Now, what would be really great is a Nintendo-branded flash card for the GBA slot - say 512MB - so that you could store demos and other content (NES/SNES games from the Rev's online service?). They'd have to digitally sign the downloads to ease piracy concerns, but it could be made fairly secure and still be cool for end users.
    • Now, what would be really great is a Nintendo-branded flash card for the GBA slot - say 512MB

      Or maybe a dedicated VoIP chip.

      It would probaly kill battery life though.
    • Now, what would be really great is a Nintendo-branded flash card for the GBA slot
      Do you mean like the GBA movie player that people are plugging CF cards into to run DS linux over on www.dslinux.org?
      • Yes, but to work, this would need to be a bootable device, maybe via a DS-slot network frontent cartridge or some such.

        Otherwise, any downloaded content could only run in GBA mode.

        What I'd imagine is a GBA flash cartridge that could store data for online enabled games and also downloadable games from the online service.

        Wifi games could just access the GBA slot's content normally, of course, but to run standalone downloaded content (say, SNES games), you'd need a DS cartridge designed to do it. Of course, th
        • Yes, but to work, this would need to be a bootable device, maybe via a DS-slot network frontent cartridge or some such.

          Otherwise, any downloaded content could only run in GBA mode.
          Moderated -1, Incorrect. They are running DS Linux on it. Obviously not in "GBA mode".

          • Re:Very cool. (Score:1, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Yeah, the DS flashcard scene is quite something. As they do it now, they use a device similar in shape as a DS cartridge, along with an actual DS cart plugged in to it, to run unsigned DS code from the flash card. Works very nicely for homebrew as well as...*cough* actual games *cough*.
          • The gba slot can run DS code by itself. To run DS Linux you need such a thing as flashme ,passme or wifime

  • What about the gba expansion slot? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Carlbunn ( 817714 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @05:54PM (#14681974)
    I don't know why they haven't thought of this before, they probably have a good reason.
    Since ds games have acess to the gba slot, (as in metroid pinball's rumble pack) Why don't they create a speech pack to enable processing of voice-chat? Seems like a no-brainer to me, and it could be optional. If you want voice-chat you buy the pack, if not you don't. Guessing by the size of mp3 players and voice recorders lately, the gba card has more than enough space to create a hardware like that...

  • Cool new stuff for the DS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AK__64 ( 740022 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @07:43PM (#14682927)
    I think Nintendo has a lot of opportunity to develop some innovative new things for the DS. I'm thinking it would be way easier to set up GPS, (which is coming to the PSP btw) and the comment about VoIP was dead on. I'd love to see some real video distribution (cheap anime, anyone?) in addition to what was announced today.
  • It would be handy to be able to have a small chat to say hello etc before you battle then say good game afterwards but really i don't feel this will be used by many of the gamers or be any benifit to their sales. The target audience like the GB has always had is mainly going to be young kids. If i can remember back 5 years when i was really into pokemon etc we just wanted to battle and trade and i know we where limited to the crappy short link cable then but i cant imagine we would have been appart anyway.

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