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But even that $60 is a ripoff

It's cheaper than buying 30 games on the Wii Virtual Console. And obviously piracy is cheaper and therefor a "better deal", so a home-built console with a PINE64, RPi3, or whatever is going to be a great deal.

But I'd like to warn you that until DMCA is overturned the status of ROM files is that they are illegal to download in the US and similar jurisdictions, even if you own the original cartridge. Much of the fair use and rights to back-up were destroyed in 1998. There is still a bit of a loophole for creating your own backups, but so far they have only been tested in courts for floppies and tapes. A ROM is not volatile and post-DMCA it's not clear that you can back up for personal use anymore.

sources: Nintendo legal (likely biased and potentially misinformation), Stackexchange (laypeople trying to make sense of complex legal code)

There's a reason the NES Classic is popular indeed:

https://en-americas-support.ni...

Challenge is fine. Complete the whole game without ever turning the thing off or saving/loading isn't a challenge, any more than than just playing the game.

But the game is a game. To be played. And enjoyed. And though you might have to have a dozen shots at the tricky levels, there's no fun at all if you just stay on that level for ever and ever or (worse) only get one shot after hours of trawling your way back.

Any games designer will tell you - impossibly hard games are crap and boring. Stupidly simple games are crap and boring. It's about the balance.

And the balance - for anyone who's not a gaming sadist - is save points at regular intervals but not at any time you ever feel like touching the button.

NES Classic lets you save whenever you like. That's why it's popular. People playing those old games they could never progress (as a child with all the time in the world) on a system where they can play in chunks (in between work and real life) and try to get past the bit they always got stuck on.

I'm no stranger to difficult games, and literally never "saved" a game for the first 10 years of my gaming life (too much faff with cassettes)... and I wouldn't go back to that. Even if I could suddenly find thousands of hours to do so in between life.

They doubtless aren't worth modern prices.

That's why, right now, you can buy a 3DS cartridge with a bunch of the NES classic games on it, for one single price of $36.

Nintendo does it too. See their Creators Program.

This is yet more evidence that the copyright holders have absolutely no intention of giving the general public their dues on the copyright bargin. It was supposed to benefit the public, and expand the public's repertoire of culture. Instead it's been used to restrict and fleece the public of their culture and money. It's long been time for change.

"The use of" "parts is required to keep your" "manufacturerâ(TM)s warranties and any extended warranties intact"

https://www.hyundaiusa.com/myhyundai/manuals-and-how-tos/Getfaq?faqId=2&category=Consumer_Awareness

"This warranty shall not apply if this product" "is used with products not sold or licensed by"

https://www.nintendo.com/consumer/manuals/warrantytext_us.jsp

"This warranty does not apply if this product" "has had the warranty seal on the" "altered, defaced, or removed."

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/warranties/ps4/

One person claim the Game Gear did 1-2 hours with 6 batteries, Atari Lynx wikipedia page says 3-4 hours for it.

The Atari Lynx wikipedia page says 4-6 hours for Atari Lynx. Lynx II even better.

Nintendo Game Boy claim here http://nerdlypleasures.blogspo... is 15 hours in the manual but others have estimated 35 hours!

Game Boy Advance SP on brightest 7-10 hours according to this: https://www.nintendo.com/consu...

At first glance I made this mistake too. For some reason they've chosen to focus their marketing effort on the cardboard, and not on the game that you play with the cardboard. This gives the impression that you're shelling out really a lot of money for some punched cardboard that have have to assemble yourself. In fact, that $80 robot kit comes with a $60 game. The cardboard is just a substitute for the plastic controllers which were so popular on the Wii.

If you look at it in that light, the cardboard is an improvement: It's cheaper than the plastic controllers, it's more environmentally friendly, it takes up less shelf space, etc. The only downside is that it's not as sturdy. This is possibly a large drawback.

The confusing bit is that they don't call the game a game, they call it "kit software," and it makes up a very small part of the advertising. I think they're trying to spin it as educational, and the fact that you have to assemble it yourself is a positive because... creativity. Or something. The problem is this gives the impression that this whole business is way overpriced.

You can develop Switch games for a nominal fee of around $450 on a special developer version of the console. If you're that keen on writing games, there you go, the offer is right in the open that allows the handful of hobbyist to get into homebrew.

But no, people want to hack the consumer version. And pirate games. Under the guise of "homebrew".

That might be true. A few years back, Apple changed the way monitor calibration works, reduced it so all you can do is change the "target white point." The rest somehow happens automatically or something, I don't know.

Unless you press "option-shift" when you open the calibration tool. Then you get the full calibration tool. "Option-shift." Good luck figuring that one out. Hooray for intuitive UI!

Not as bad as LAN mode in Splatoon 2...
http://en-americas-support.nin...

Come on, Nintendo, give us a real NES/SNES/N64 combo box.

Don't bet on it. A combo console would be very hard, maybe impossible, to design the look that would trigger nostalgic feelings, which drive these sales, because it physically won't look like any of the original consoles. Also, Nintendo can also sell more units by splitting the systems up.

If the look of the console doesn't matter and you just want to play the old games, then Nintendo happily resells them to you through their virtual console digital store. http://www.nintendo.com/games/...

Like Unity on the Wii U, you'll still probably need to be a licensed Nintendo dev

Which isn't nearly as hard as it was back in the late 2000s when Robert Pelloni did the Bob's Game publicity stunt. In July 2016, Nintendo dramatically opened up developer registration. In particular, a small family business operating out of a home office is no longer banned so long it can come up with about 3000 USD for the devkit.

So nowadays, the route to market for a startup developer of gamepad-oriented games is Itch, then Steam, then PlayStation or Nintendo.

Other than multiplayer games, which I can't imagine was a HUGE market at the time, isn't the fact that the DS plays GBA games somewhat significant? Hard to feel abandoned if your old system still worked, and your old games worked even if you upgraded to the newer device?

The MSRP for the Nintendo Classic is $59.99, however, the going price (at Walmart for example) is $239.71 currently due to restricted stock.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Nin...

http://www.nintendo.com/nes-cl...

This July, Nintendo offered devkits to individuals for the first time. See https://developer.nintendo.com...

> Everything these days has nonreplaceable batteries

Everything but Nintendo products:
How to Remove, Reseat, or Replace the Battery
How to Remove, Reseat, or Replace the Battery in a Wii U GamePad

> Everything these days has nonreplaceable batteries

Everything but Nintendo products:
How to Remove, Reseat, or Replace the Battery
How to Remove, Reseat, or Replace the Battery in a Wii U GamePad

Buy a computer that only some people (those who pay extra) are allowed to program? That's totally absurd.

The standard answer is that developer qualifications improve the median quality of games. The last time everybody was allowed to program a console was the Atari 2600. The flood of crap during 1983, led by rushed licenses such as E.T. and Pac-Man as well as blatant cash-ins such as Chase the Chuck Wagon, almost brought down the North American video game industry. (Distributors going bankrupt to avoid honoring their return policies didn't help either.) It took the NES's lockout chip to revive retailers' and users' interest in video games.

But both Microsoft and Nintendo have opened their developer programs dramatically during this console generation. Xbox One runs UWP apps with an developer mode enabler app available at no additional charge to Dev Center members, and Nintendo recently allowed individuals to become developers regardless of "industry experience". I'm guessing it's a response to the comparative openness of Apple's App Store and Google Play Store, along with the realization that reviews by third parties can filter out the crap.

Native apps from "garage" developers: zero users on Wii U. Web apps from "garage" developers: greater than zero users on Wii U.

You're not genuinely trying to argue that the Wii U is a significant application platform, are you? It's a games platform for children, and the least successful console of the current generation by a mile. You'd be crazy to target it for applications, native or otherwise.

Even HTML5 game support is weak on the Wii. No support for sound? Does it even have WebGL support? Nope, guess not. And look at this weird non-standard stuff. Effortless support it ain't.

You haven't provided evidence for your claim that web development with all its current limitations, with all the vagaries of differences between browsers is more efficient or productive than native cross platform application development. Some me some real, measurable outcomes instead of making vague assertions.

First, there's the overhead of obtaining hardware on which to test the build for each platform. You essentially have to buy a Mac, buy a copy of Parallels, and buy a retail copy of Windows.

Welcome to professional development. And as you said yourself it's the same deal for web development. What, you got your Wii U for free in a box of cereal or something?

That's fine once your company is big enough to afford "the right development environment".

Many cross platform languages, libraries, and development environments are free. You can use GCC or Rust or Python or Free Pascal and their associated libraries, or use none of them and use something else. You want to do GUI applications? Look, here's an option. Here's another. Use what you want, I don't care.

There are more options available now than ever. Small companies can easily find the right development environment for them for native application development for as much or as little money as they want to spend.

Native apps from "garage" developers: zero users on Wii U. Web apps from "garage" developers: greater than zero users on Wii U.

You're not genuinely trying to argue that the Wii U is a significant application platform, are you? It's a games platform for children, and the least successful console of the current generation by a mile. You'd be crazy to target it for applications, native or otherwise.

Even HTML5 game support is weak on the Wii. No support for sound? Does it even have WebGL support? Nope, guess not. And look at this weird non-standard stuff. Effortless support it ain't.

You haven't provided evidence for your claim that web development with all its current limitations, with all the vagaries of differences between browsers is more efficient or productive than native cross platform application development. Some me some real, measurable outcomes instead of making vague assertions.

First, there's the overhead of obtaining hardware on which to test the build for each platform. You essentially have to buy a Mac, buy a copy of Parallels, and buy a retail copy of Windows.

Welcome to professional development. And as you said yourself it's the same deal for web development. What, you got your Wii U for free in a box of cereal or something?

That's fine once your company is big enough to afford "the right development environment".

Many cross platform languages, libraries, and development environments are free. You can use GCC or Rust or Python or Free Pascal and their associated libraries, or use none of them and use something else. You want to do GUI applications? Look, here's an option. Here's another. Use what you want, I don't care.

There are more options available now than ever. Small companies can easily find the right development environment for them for native application development for as much or as little money as they want to spend.

The assertion seems to be that since code will be ubiquitous, then everyone will learn to code is provably silly.

Silly yes. Provably silly? I don't know about provably.

But even if they TAUGHT everyone to code in school they still wouldn't know how. How many adults can still do high school math?

Cars have become universal, yet the ability to fix them decreases with every generation.

Decent example. But I'd have just pointed at pants. Those are ubiquitous too. How many people do you know that could make a pair? Or even repair them? Hem them? Replace a button?

I think the average persons ability to write code will be on par with their expertise with clothing. They'll be able to get dressed, and that's about it.

Literacy is nearly universal now, would anyone assert that people write better now than they did 100 years ago?

Um. Bad example. I'd say that is an unqualified: 'yes'.

it just takes to much time/effort for hobbyists to make something comparably decent that doesn't look like crap compared to professionally produced levels.

Well... Mario Maker launched last week.... I'd say the number of average people designing game levels has quite possibly spiked to an all time high. ;)

http://supermariomaker.nintend...

How do you implement that, non-ambiguously, in an intuitive way?

The second link has a bit about that. As it turns out, you really don't want real-world physics. In the case of SMB, much simpler models (see the fourth link), using nothing more than simple arithmetic (in line with TFA), are not only effective, but much simpler to implement on old hardware like the 6502. The iterative process of adding effects and tweaking values until the controls "feel" right. (I can't find the interview i saw earlier, but this should give you a sense of that iterative process, from the developers themselves.)

Sure, anything can be accomplished eventually through brute force and pure persistence, but the programmer with math and physics knowledge is going to do it better and faster

No one is disputing that such knowledge is useful. The question here is whether it's essential.

For games, it's pretty obvious that it's unnecessary, as you admit here. Though I'd like to add, from some of the discussions I ran across, attempting to model real-world physics in games can actually introduce problems that simpler approaches avoid. Again, see the second link. There were a few discussions I ran across yesterday with a quick search that go in to this as well. I can dig them up if you're interested though it shouldn't take you more than a few minutes to find them on your own.

and likely more elegant, because it's hard to find something more elegant than the laws of nature.

I keep going back to that second link, but that answers this pretty well (the second page, iirc). Player physics in games are pretty far divorced from reality -- and for good reason. They simply don't work very well for games. Consequently, you'll find no end to the articles discussing the design of player physics. Common to all of them, as mentioned earlier, is the need to iteratively adjust various values until things "feel" right.

Again, this is a situation where a strong maths background seems essential, but really isn't. Basic arithmetic, and a good aesthetic sense, is sufficient.

It also means only games that were released after the DSi can use WPA, older games are stuck with wep or no security.

Local network play on DS games uses Nintendo's proprietary network layer, which the homebrew community called "Ni-Fi", not IP. Pre-3DS games lost all online capability when Gamespy died and took WFC with it. So when Gamespy died, that was the last straw for me to switch all routers to WPA.

They're terrified of their brand ever being associated with "adult" material because parents might sue them for said exposing their child to hypothetical adult material.

That must be why Nintendo partnered with Playboy to promote the Nintendo exclusive release of Bayonetta 2.

http://wiiudaily.com/2014/10/nintendo-partners-with-playboy-to-promote-bayonetta-2/
http://bayonetta2.nintendo.com/
http://www.playboy.com/galleries/pamela-horton-nintendo-bayonetta/slide-1

This has nothing to do with the relations between Brazil and Japan and everything to do with the fact that Nintendo is dying. This company has shown time and again that all they can do is release tired useless gimmick after tired useless gimmick and pass that off as "innovation". They release the same games every single year with absolutely no change and force their customers to pay a massive premium. The Wii was a massive joke, except no one laughed. Their 3DS handheld has less power than the original PlayStation Portable and costs 3 times as much and has no games. The Wii U has less power than the original XBOX much less the 360. Don't get me started on that abomination of a controller that weighs as much as a cinder-block, has a range of about 1 foot, and a battery life measured in minutes and not hours.

Nintendo is the corporate equivalent of the walking dead. I doubt they will even be around in five years. Even their own shareholders can't stand them. They would just be better selling off all their IP to a company that knows how to actually produce something, like Disney. Then Miyamoto and Iwata should do the world a favor and commit sepuku to atone for the massive failures they have inflicted on the game industry.

Ooo, this should be fun. I'mma go ahead and debunk basically everything you've just said that can be proven with numbers.

The Wii was a massive joke.: FALSE. The Wii has sold over 100 million units, and about 9 times as much software (so, about 9 games per console. Not bad!)

The 3DS handheld has less power than the original Playstation Portable and costs 3 times as much and has no games: FALSE. The 3DS runs an ARM11 Dual-core at 268 Mhz compared to the PSP's CPU held back to 222MHz. The only way it's more powerful is through mods/hacking. In addition, the 3DS has had over 186 million software units sold, compared to psp's 5.2 million. In addition, the PSP retailed for $199. The 3DS retailed for $249, and later went down to $149. So, no, not three times more.

The Wii U has less power than the original XBOX much less the 360: FALSE.The WII U is lcocked at 1.24 GHz, compared to the original Xbox's 733Mhz. Now, the Wii U does have a slower clock than the 360, but has more memory and a higher GPU clock. Raw CPU power will only get you so far, and the Wii U is more than capable of out-shining the 360.

Controller weighs as much as a cinder-block, has a range of 1 foot and battery life measured in minutes, not hours.: FALSE. The Wii U gamepad weighs about 1.1 pounds. Cinder blocks, on the other hand, usually come in at 30 to 35 pounds. The range goes up to 27.5 feet, but typically works best up to 15. The Battery life CAN be measured in minutes, but only if you consider that 180 to 300 minutes a better way of saying it than 3 to 5 hours.

Nintendo is the corporate equivalent of the walking dead. I doubt they'll even be around in five years.: FALSE. Nintendo has enough money saved up to last 52 years, assuming an annual deficit of 250 million. That seems unlikely given that they had a profit of over

This has nothing to do with the relations between Brazil and Japan and everything to do with the fact that Nintendo is dying. This company has shown time and again that all they can do is release tired useless gimmick after tired useless gimmick and pass that off as "innovation". They release the same games every single year with absolutely no change and force their customers to pay a massive premium. The Wii was a massive joke, except no one laughed. Their 3DS handheld has less power than the original PlayStation Portable and costs 3 times as much and has no games. The Wii U has less power than the original XBOX much less the 360. Don't get me started on that abomination of a controller that weighs as much as a cinder-block, has a range of about 1 foot, and a battery life measured in minutes and not hours.

Nintendo is the corporate equivalent of the walking dead. I doubt they will even be around in five years. Even their own shareholders can't stand them. They would just be better selling off all their IP to a company that knows how to actually produce something, like Disney. Then Miyamoto and Iwata should do the world a favor and commit sepuku to atone for the massive failures they have inflicted on the game industry.

Ooo, this should be fun. I'mma go ahead and debunk basically everything you've just said that can be proven with numbers.

The Wii was a massive joke.: FALSE. The Wii has sold over 100 million units, and about 9 times as much software (so, about 9 games per console. Not bad!)

The 3DS handheld has less power than the original Playstation Portable and costs 3 times as much and has no games: FALSE. The 3DS runs an ARM11 Dual-core at 268 Mhz compared to the PSP's CPU held back to 222MHz. The only way it's more powerful is through mods/hacking. In addition, the 3DS has had over 186 million software units sold, compared to psp's 5.2 million. In addition, the PSP retailed for $199. The 3DS retailed for $249, and later went down to $149. So, no, not three times more.

The Wii U has less power than the original XBOX much less the 360: FALSE.The WII U is lcocked at 1.24 GHz, compared to the original Xbox's 733Mhz. Now, the Wii U does have a slower clock than the 360, but has more memory and a higher GPU clock. Raw CPU power will only get you so far, and the Wii U is more than capable of out-shining the 360.

Controller weighs as much as a cinder-block, has a range of 1 foot and battery life measured in minutes, not hours.: FALSE. The Wii U gamepad weighs about 1.1 pounds. Cinder blocks, on the other hand, usually come in at 30 to 35 pounds. The range goes up to 27.5 feet, but typically works best up to 15. The Battery life CAN be measured in minutes, but only if you consider that 180 to 300 minutes a better way of saying it than 3 to 5 hours.

Nintendo is the corporate equivalent of the walking dead. I doubt they'll even be around in five years.: FALSE. Nintendo has enough money saved up to last 52 years, assuming an annual deficit of 250 million. That seems unlikely given that they had a profit of over

Its clearly a derivative work; and when published to the internet with ad revenue attched to it, then it becomes a commercial 'for profit' derivative work.

So, should Adobe get a cut of the profit you made from selling your photo just because you used Photoshop to create it? Should MS get a cut because your app is generated (derived) by the Visual Studio compiler/linker? Of course, not.

Trademarks and copyrights for third-party games and characters are owned by the companies that market or license those products.

According to their copyright page, Nintendo does not own the copyright to these games, so how can they demand ad-revenue?

'In Hidden In Plain Sight, your character is one ninja lost in a sea of CPU-controlled ninjas with exactly the same texture. In the first few seconds, you have to walk left, right, up, down, anything that will let you understand which of the characters on the screen is yours. Once you've got that, you have to figure out your opponents. Any move that doesn't look like is performed by the AI could give you away.'

Yeah, there's a Wii U party game disc that has about a dozen variations on this; along with a dozen variations on a dozen more mini-game archetypes...

http://www.nintendo.com/games/...

Not to rag on the Ouya, but if this is the Ouya's niche, they're taking on Nintendo on their home turf, without Mario, Metroid, Zelda, or Pokemon... not even a Pikman or Skylanders to back them up.

The Ouya's about half the price after you get some extra controllers relative to a WiiU with a few extra wiimotes. But the value proposition of the Wii U is far greater... not to mention unlike the other current gen systems... they kept back-compat with the original Wii.

The Wii U only supports one new controller.

Well that's of course not true. From the Wii U tech specs:

"The Wii U console is capable of supporting two Wii U GamePad controllers, up to four Wii Remote (or Wii Remote Plus) controllers or Wii U Pro Controllers, and Wii accessories such as the Nunchuk, Classic Controller and Wii Balance Board."

.

Possibly because they've already discontinued most of the online features.

http://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/tiQImp7Oi97LiEyVqwDqL-eDnX6u9qjk

Nope. Component Cables will not work with the Wii Mini.

The game style is not? Have you played a recent Mario game? New Super Mario Bros. U is a side-scrolling platformer. If that's not what you're referring to as style, could you please elaborate?

To advertise Nintendo products? Same as the original?

I dunno, it seems strange not to make any attempt at keeping it going online. I'm assuming it had some readers to keep it going as a pure-print magazine for the past decade, during which it would have made sense to bring it online.

After all, Sony has the PlayStation blog and Microsoft has... uh... whatever this is, I guess. (Does Major Nelson's blog count?)

Nintendo has, well, nothing. Sure, there's nintendo.com, but that compares more to us.playstation.com (playstation.com redirects me to jp.playstation.com for some reason) and xbox.com. They have no real "community" site, which something like Nintendo Power could fill. It seems strange to not even attempt an online version.

Analog or component out..

http://www.nintendo.com/wiimini/what-is-wii-mini/#/whats-in-the-box

Link doesn't work anymore. Nor did the link to "Best Buy" from the OP have the Wii Mini on the Front page.

Conspiracy, someone is trying to hide the info...

Analog or component out.. http://www.nintendo.com/wiimini/what-is-wii-mini/#/whats-in-the-box

They sent me this link earlier today: http://www.nintendo.com/wiimini?country=CA&lang=en/

They're not wasting their money.. is replaces the original Wii. So they have 2 products - The full blown Wii U and then Wii Mini. The Wii Mini will be their entry level machine, no internet is great so I can let the kids play and not have to worry about them accessing the internet - it's a basic console. It's also only $99. If I want to access the internet and have full access to the internet, then I have my Wii U. http://www.nintendo.com/wiimini?country=CA&lang=en/

Further, board games are physical objects and not software

Board games are routinely converted to software, like this one or this one.

I don't know they have quite a few games on launch or thereafter. Some great ones for kids, some for adults. Darksiders 2, Ninja Gaiden 3, Mass Effect 3 (may not be the best example if you have played the other two on a different system), Batman: Arkham City (Special edition, whatever the hell that means). I think it'll be a good system, but what do I know. I just got a 360 last year for Christmas.

http://www.nintendo.com/wiiu/games

Here, get a load of this.

In short: downloading ROMs are illegal, because you must do backup copies yourself, you dirty thief; copiers are illegal, because you can upload copied ROMs, you dirty thief (how the fuck you're supposed to make legal backups without copiers is beyond me); emulators are illegal, because you use them to play illegal downloaded ROMs, you dirty thief; by pirating NES games you damage $15 bln. industry with tens of thousands jobs, you dirty thief; not available anymore != copyright expired, so you won't be playing such gems as Action 52 legally for another half century, you dirty thief.

All around pleasant people.

I wonder, can you go to individual authors asking for permission to distribute, like ZX Spectrum guys do, or Nintendo has a say in it, so you might as well go and get fucked?

Most of the specs were released by Nintendo.

Information on the GPU was released on Engadget.

Wii Parental Controls

Xbox 360 Parental Controls

PlayStation 3 Parental Controls

The abbreviated list Ars Technica is quoting is straight from Nintendo, so i don't think anyone knows what the full list will end up being. However i'm amused by the number of people who thought that pointing you at Wikipedia's complete list of 3DS games was somehow appropriate =P

tend to forget to attach the wrist strap.

Or they may still have an early wrist strap. The initial wiimote wrist straps were clearly based on a camera wrist strap and the cord that attaches the strap to the wiimote was not strong enough to provide protection against accidental throwing. A second generation of wrist strap with a much thicker attatchment cord was produced and Nintendo offered a replacement program but many people may not be aware of it.

http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/strapreplace.jsp

There now seems to be a third version of the wrist strap which in addition to the thicker attatchement cord has a lever to lock the strap aduster (presumablly to reduce the risk of the strap slipping off).

Speaking of which:

http://press.nintendo.com/E32011/
login: E32011
pw: nintendo

FYI, you can copy your data to an SD card, and then just remove the card.

From the page you linked: "Please note that while most game save files can be copied, some titles -- particularly those that have online play -- may not allow for the copying of save files to an SD Card." Every Wii game with WFC play that I own keeps the saved progress and the friend code credentials in the same SD card, and Nintendo doesn't want people copying friend code credentials.

... or because you can't backup licenses in Mario Kart Wii.

FYI, you can copy your data to an SD card, and then just remove the card.

So what's happened this generation isn't that Nintendo have massively outperformed the competition; they haven't.

You are completely and utterly wrong about that. Nintendo made billions while Microsoft and Sony lost billions. Especially Microsoft.

Nintendo massively outperformed Microsoft and Sony in the console market. Massively. You saying black is white doesn't change that fact.

There's no such thing as a Visual Boy

There is, but Nintendo wants it pulled for a different reason.

Yeah, so Nintendo demoed this already at E3 last year, but I'm sure like everything else, all the fanbois will forget that other people already came up with the cool tech, and Apple is yet again just ripping it off. Somehow, Apple will once again be touted as the most innovative rainbow ponies and gumdrops company ever (I'm sure of it).

While "has buttons" is a bad criterion, it is true that the iPhone was not designed to be a portable console. This is evident both in the interface (the touchscreen/tilt sensor combination is not very well suited for precise input and control schemes involving more than three or four buttons) and in the fact that at launch Apple didn't allow third-party software, which would be fairly devastating to a console. Third-party software - and thus games - was entirely an afterthought.

The iPhone/iPod touch/iPad are not primarily intended to be portable consoles. They are, respectively, a smartphone, a PDA and a tablet. They happen to play games and they have accumulated a large library over time (enough to advertise as a feature) but they are no more consoles than the Palm V or the Nokia N900 are. I think that a comparison between portable consoles makes the most sense when all involved devices were designed and intended as portable consoles. For instance, a lot of iPhone buyers bought it as a smartphone and not for its gaming capabilities (although I do admit that the PS3 has a similar problem as some people buy it just as a Blu-ray player.).



Semantics aside, more relevant to the discussion is that the NDS had easily twice as many sales as the PSP. In fact, the measuring stick would be the original Game Boy series (Game Boy/Pocket/Color/Light). It's widely known as a raging success, having enjoyed good sales on virtually unchanged hardware for a full decade.

Using Nintendo's 2008 annual financial report as a source we see that in 2008 Nintendo has sold about 81 million Game Boy Advances and about 119 million classic Game Boys. Even if we assume that the classic Game Boy continued to get sales it's unlikely to be far above 120 million units today. So Nintendo has sold more DSes in six years than classic Game Boys in twelve years (assuming that all classic Game Boy sales stopped when the GBA was introduced in 2001). The PSP doesn't even measure up against the Game Boy Advance although it's newer and can still overtake it. It's obvious that the NDS fares tremendously better in the market than the PSP does.

Also of interest are the other figures: As of 2008, Nintendo sold 25 million Wiis, 22 million Gamecubes, 33 million N64s, 49 million SNESes and 62 million NESes. Even allowing for the Wii being new and the N64 and the GameCube being failures, this illustrates that stationary consoles don't sell as many units as portable ones. The markets seem to behave differently, thus a direct comparison between the respective sales numbers may be pointless.