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Listen To Your Game Boy Advance

Posted by timothy on from the uncumbrance dept.

filmsmith writes "It looks like Nintendo may be interested in using the GBA to enter the PDA market and even considering itself competition for the Apple iPod. It smells of DMCA pandering, though. 'It looks like protection will be in place to ensure that even content recorded by users (through the use of a special adapter) will not be able to be shared with other users.' Planet Gamecube has the article here."

6 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Again... by Slashdot+Insider · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know it makes for good headlines, but nowhere does it say Nintendo is endorsing this.

  2. A Few Concerns by GweeDo · · Score: 5, Informative

    My concerns are with the quality. The first is with the Audio...the DSP that is built into the GBA isn't going to be playing my favorite bands in any form of high quality. My second concern with with video. 240x160x16bit color basically can't be done in full motion on the GBA (just can't make enough memory writes before VBLANK ends). 240x160x8bit is though...but who wants to watch 256 color vides?

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  3. Special adapter by djupedal · · Score: 5, Funny

    "...content recorded by users (through the use of a special adapter) will not be able to be shared with other users."

    Ah yes, the 'cone of silence'...how unique :)

  4. PDA market? by Chris+Canfield · · Score: 5, Interesting
    A: the article in question says that a consortium of 3rd party companies (Toshiba, Imagica, and Bandai), none of which are related to Nintendo, have created essentially an MP3 / media player for the Game Boy Advance.

    B: MP3 players for the original Game Boy have been available for many years, and never sold particularly well. This was probably due to the decompression being done in hardware, driving prices up. 40 dollars for an MP3 player isn't bad.

    C: The article mentions Museum tours and Manga as potential content to be distributed on this system, none of which compete in any way with the IPod.

    D: The article says you will be able to get 5 hours of audio on a 32 MB smartmedia card. Either this means the compression level will be rediculously high and the output quite, quite bad, or they are using MIDI / Mod techniques, or (and this is my personal opinion), Planet GameCube just doesn't have a factchecker on staff.

    DMCA Pandering? Competition for the 20GB gee-I-sound-and-look-sleek Ipod? Are people throwing random buzzwords into stories theses days in order to get them posted? What does this even have to do with PDAs?

    Come on Filmsmith and Timothy... Justify yourselves. What do you know that we don't?

    P.S. The article that this article is based upon can be found, with pictures, here.

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  5. Re:this is normal for nintendo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They have never been much for sharing, even their old games. They can still profit from them and so still want to sell everything to users.

    Imagine that. A company wants to profit from the product they create. Fuckers.

    They currently still sell even their ancient NES games as playable on the GBA through the use of the e-card reader.

    Thus, the ancient NES games are playable. If the makers of the game can turn a profit, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so? That's what they were made for in the first place.

    Or should NES games enter the public domain after 10 years, because you want to play an emulator? Come on. It's not abandonware. Nintendo has all the right in the world to prevent the illegal copying of their games.

    Just because Nintendo has a great line of games and (in my opinion) a great line of consoles, doesn't mean they are a morally correct company.

    Bunk. It's like you listen to Lessig but you're not really hearing him. The creators of the work have the right to be compensated for their work, for a reasonable window of time.

    They have done everything from price fixing to scamming the government...

    This I know nothing about, but I'd be curious to read more if you've got links.

    Sorry. It sounds like I'm picking on you here, which is not the intent. I'm just bothered by your sense of entitlement.

  6. Here is a better Link with Pictures by doctor_no · · Score: 5, Informative

    It seems like more a portable video player than an Ipod.

    Here is the link
    http://mb.vgdirectory.com/game020403d.htm

    "AM3 announced they will release a Smart Media Adaptor for GameBoy Advance and GameBoy Advance SP in October, which allows you to download multimedia contents and play on the GameBoy Advance. The AM3 Smart Media Adaptor will retail for 2800 yen, and the AM3 32M Smart Media Cards will retail for 2000 yen each. Downloadable contents such as e-Books, animated cartoon will retail between 200 - 500 yen each. AM3 is also planning to install kiosk terminals in convenient stores for customers to purchase contents."