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Nintendo DS to Play Movies?
swisener writes "An article at CNN speculates that the Nintendo DS could have multimedia playback, making it more of a competitor to Sony's PSP. If true, it will be interesting to see whether or not the big N can be successful with something other than a pure gaming machine."
I think what Nintendo should focus on is improving the gamer's *gaming* experience otherwise they stand to lose the very users that made the Gameboy as successful as it is today.
Just ask Nokia, they forgot that their core market was cellphones and instead of leveraging their effort at polishing up their cellphones they ventured off into gaming with less than satisfatory results.
In addition, movies on the go demand a lot more from the DS including copyright protection etc which, Nintendo shouldn't IMHO delve into...
In short, Nintendo should put their boffins to good use figuring out how to take advantage of the dual screens for gaming and not for movies.
I wonder if those reporters ever stopped to think that the movie was just a demonstration of the FMV capabilities? It seems unlikly that Nintendo is going to be able support movie distrobution on a new format in such a short amount of time. Not that this is particularly a bad thing. A compressed movie running on a 3" screen with low resolution using expensive cartridge media does not particualrly excite me.
Now, WHY OH WHY would they bother with a portable that could play movies too? It's a proprietary format which means that you couldn't (legally) pop a cart into your computer and copy a movie over, so this means that either 1) the film industry would have to adopt a new media format, or the more likely 2) there would be five or six films tops for the DS.
I don't think this is exactly a bright idea. Nintendo has *always* focused on making a gaming device and not a multi-use media centre; I have a hard time believing that the Big N is going to deviate from 25-odd years of success *now*.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Strange, I don't even remember 8mm. A few things are different this time, though; the big thing being that install base is widely expected to be at least decent (whereas why would people change their 20-year-old VCRs? Consoles are one of the few formats which seem to get people to update hardware) and it's portable without being pirated, which is something the movie industry has a stake in pushing these days.
All that said, yeah you're probably right.
CNN makes silly speculation and gamers promptly blame Nintendo for creating such a dumb idea.
This is why Nintendo is dying.
Sony can release PSP for $399 or something ridiculous. If this DS handheld is a true competitor, then Sony will likely lower the prices to compete. PSP being cheaper = larger audience.
On the other hand Nintendo not releasing DS will force Sony to keep the price at $399. Sony might end up shooting themselves in the foot.
Sony entered the console market because the other console makers were not being creative enough, they knew 3d was where it's at, now look where they are.
:) Easy, the FACT that Nintendo doesn't know anything about their audience anymore is what's going to kill them.
The chances of them demolishing Nintendo with it's pathetic gameboy are pretty good, the psp is going to have PS2 games and the DS, well it'll have 2 screens!
Adding movie support for a proprietary format is going to be easy, it's just allowing a game's intro cutscene to run for 30 min with a little menu
Also as regards earlier conversations involving DVD players in Gamecubes, I know 3 students who purchased consoles in order to have DVD capacity at university. Any arguements that DVD's would make the system more expensive are so ridiculously stupid it's funny, there might be liscencing costs involved with using DVD's (I.P. on Dvd's is owned by japanese company and they guard religiously), but it's a cheaper technology and much easier to obtain in bulk. The value lost by NOT having a dvd player, no media capacity of any kind due to this in the system and NOT using standard sized disks is huge. The only mitigating factor is the lack of piracy, and even that is only so-so.
the psp is going to have PS2 games
How are those huge PS2 DVDs going to fit into that tiny PSP?
there might be liscencing costs involved with using DVD's
There are. You know who makes money from those licensing fees? Sony. Why should Nintendo give money to Sony for everyone of their consoles sold. That's why the DVD functionality costs extra on the XBox.
NOT using standard sized disks is huge
What size are the PSP discs going to be, again?
Sony entered the console market because the other console makers were not being creative enough, they knew 3d was where it's at
Doesn't Sony also have a huge amount of money invested in the movie industry as well? I mean, they had that DVD technology to push, right? But maybe I'm getting off track here. Can you please share with us some of Sony's creative 1st party 3D games for the PS2? Thanks.
the cosmos in 20 words or less: thumbuki.com
Actually, because it's Nintendo, it's doubtful that they intend for this ability to be used to actually watch movies. It was more likely a demonstration of streaming audio and video from a DS cartridge. With no technical details to go on, it's hard to guess, but I'd wager that such a demo would be used to showcase greatly improved data transfer rates. That in turn could be a sign that the DS game cartridges will hold a lot more data than previously speculated. At any rate, the only concrete information in the article is that "a two-hour movie (fit onto a 128 MB flash cartridge) has been successfully demonstrated on the DS." That's not even enough information to justify the wild speculation I just engaged in, so I'll just go back to waiting quietly for more details before I jump to any conclusions.
All I want is for my consoles to play games. Why do companies think adding the kitchen sink will make me want to buy their game system? I don't care about PDA, cell phone, or movie/mp3 functions. When I buy a game system, I buy it TO PLAY GAMES! If I want a portable movie player, I'll go buy one of those portable DVD players and at least be able to play media I already have. If I wanted an mp3 player, I'd go buy a REAL mp3 player.
So if this nonsense means that the DS will cost more money, then my advice to Nintendo is: Forget about it. I'm not paying more for a feature that I don't want.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
Hearing about the possibility of movie playback made me think, "Gee, controlling video playback with a D-pad and a few buttons will be kinda lame." Of all the baseless rumors I've heard about the DS (wireless gaming, 3D LCD, analog stick, GBA compatibility, etc.) no one seems to have considered the possibility that they could stick a pressure-sensitive surface over the second screen (meaning the one people assume will be "the map screen" or whatever) to provide extra soft buttons, not just for applications like this but to do things like make item selection easier.
It's as farfetched as any of the other speculation about the DS, but the video connection makes this possibility interesting.
Before the GBA game out, Nintendo did various demos to show the screen quality of the GBA. Those demos included showing two N64 games - Yoshi's Island and Rogue Squadron - on the GBA screen. People misinterpreted this to mean the GBA could play N64 quality games. It's probably the same deal here.