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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.
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.
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.