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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."
...you can watch two movies at once. Oh boy!
--riney
two-hour movie (fit onto a 128 MB flash cartridge
That's roughly 1MB a minute, not too shabby compression though probably really tiny resolution. Considering that the cartridges for the DS are likely to be proprietary, don't get your hopes up that you'll be able to toss your own movies on the system. In addition, Nintendo will have to scare up some relationships with hollywood to get movie rights.
All in all, it sounds like this one will likely sputter out due to the (likely) proprietary nature of both the cartridges and the movie compression and the difficulty of getting studios to sign onto a new format (does anyone remember how FEW 8mm hollywood movies were released (meant to compete with VHS late in the game)).
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
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.
Here's some hypothetical plans:
1. Make a handheld that plays GameCube games.
2. Make a handheld that supports reasonable 3d games and wireless gaming.
3. Make a portable system that plays GameCube games and DVD's.
4. Make a portable system with two screens (increasing cost/size), don't say why, don't release any information while PSP eats your mindshare lunch, don't give any re-assurance about specs/capabilities, and have vague, horrifying rumors that it plays movies in some wacky, proprietary format
Please, Nintendo, don't kill your fanboys like this. Have some mercy. Or shame. Or something.
My dream advice? Co-brand the next X-Box with MS (call it XCube) - it's new architecture should make it easy to make it GameCube backwards compatible. Then make a handheld that's GameCube compatible. You can sell the great new software for the XCube, while also making money on GameCube/PortaGameCube/Also-Playable-on-XCube games.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
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.
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.
would do well for themselves to build a nice, portable GameCube-compatible gaming device, including mini CD-R MP3 player into it, and mini-DVD video player (or just bite the bullet and increase the form factor slightly and play regular DVDs and CDs, or, just forget both CDs and DVDs entirely and focus on GameCube compatibility).
A subnotebook-sized GameCube device would be pretty durned successful, one would think? Complete with broadband adapter and GameBoy player compatibility? Heck, you could probably do fairly well hacking up used GameCubes and re-selling them after remanufacturing.
MORTAR COMBAT!
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
It would be interesting that the DS could also function as somethign simple, like an MP3 player. For Nintendo's purposes, its probably not very hard to add in mp3 support, but it could go a long way in marketing. Perhaps They could also use it as an extension to a digital camera; multimedia is a very broad term. They really just need to avoid falling into the same pitfall that N-Gage did. While it would be interesting to see what they come up with, inside, I hope it stays a gaming machine.
...then the whole DS thing might just make sense. People have speculated that the PSP will be priced around $199. Of course, they'd be a public outcry if the next Game Boy cost anything more than $99. So they might need something higher-end to compete with the PSP. If they do add video and music playback, then it will be the same "handheld media center" thing the PSP is. I still don't get why they're putting two screens on it, but hey...maybe it's just an excuse to charge more for it (people have gotten used to Nintendo's portables being much cheaper then consoles, which defies all Laws of Technology ;-))
All along, people here have been saying that the DS is not supposed to compete with PSP. But, maybe the DS is closer to the Walkman of the New Millenium then people think.
Or maybe, it's just one big tech demo.
The only thing for sure is that nothing's for sure. (Whoa.) Just some speculation...
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.