Slashdot Mirror
E3 - First Nintendo DS Pic
Ravi Hiranand writes "Steven Kent has a look at the Nintendo DS -- along with what appears to be the first picture of the unit (which doesn't look anything like any of the wild rumours suggested it might!). It's still unclear whether the game pictured (a Mario Kart title!) is really a DS game or whether the whole thing is just a render, but the image is credited to Nintendo, so it appears to be genuine..."
Honestly, it doesn't look too dissimilar to the GBA SP, and that's one of the best selling consoles of all time.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
At least Nintendo finally decided to give their handheld four face buttons. I couldn't believe they chose to leave them out of the GBA design. Especially considering the mass amount of SNES ports it received.
Creator of the popular web game Proximity
It not only looks big, but also cheap. We can only hope that the photo is some early prototype or something. If the DS looks anything like that, and the PSP looks anything like the photos we've been seeing, the DS is gonna get crushed.
The DS also has Bluetooth wireless communication to connect with other units within range for cordless competition. DS has separate slots for current Game Boy Advance cartridges and new, smaller DS game cards.
Backwards compatible and built in wireless? Where do I sign up for a pre order?
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
It looks very Nintendo. It sounds like Nintendo has no plans into getting into a computing power/graphics race with Sony, but intends to focus on their dominance in innovative game design. Consider this is the company whose original low-resolution original black&white GameBoy stomped color portable systems into the ground, I wouldn't dismiss it. A Zelda or Metroid game with N64 quality graphics on one screen and a map display on the other would be very appealing.
HAH! I called it. I knew it. First screen is top, second screen is touch screen, otherwise same basic layout as GBASP! Knew it.
You can see what happened. Nintendo's been playing with the dual-screen games based on the GBA+GC combination, and likes it. Now they want that in a handheld.
Think about it: it runs bluetooth, will have a high price point, so it will be expensive... now thing about the games: a touch screen, which is useless for action - I'm thinking more turn-based and RT strategy game as well as some complex puzzle games.
The conclusion is obvsiou: Nintendo is trying to grow up and sell a handheld for adults. And it will be sweet. Think of multiplayer strategy games, over bluetooth, with a touchscreen to work with.
Sorry Guy, but you're not entirely correct there on the age spread... I bought my 30 year old gf one on the GB Advances and installed an afterburner kit in it. Its pretty sweet- she probably plays that more than she watches tv. (For some reason between the computers and the GB, the TV doesn't get much usage...;-)
I know a lot of college students who also own them. Turns out they're a decent waste of time if you have time to waste. And yes- I also know some 12 year olds who have them.
They make a LOT of different games for those things... And yes- a lot of em are aimed at the pre-teen crowd, but they also make a lot of classic games too. (I play Joust-)
Sig currently under construction. Mind the gap....
I think I'm still finding it hard to catch that freaking Pikachu.
Seriously, though, I'm a college student with a full time job at the moment, but I still love my SP dearly. Not just for the abundance of games, but for the compactability and portability. I can play it anywhere. Not that I have a lot of time now, but I still get a chance.
Sure, the screen is 'tiny' (bigger than most cellphones,) and it can't do amazingly wonderful graphics like the XBox or Gamecube. But, then, if I wanted to play XBox or Gamecube, I'd first of all own one, and then I'd get a portable screen for them and lug them around in a cooler.
One of the reasons Nintendo's 8-bit hand held stood above the colorful and vibrant competition was price. Price price and more price. That, and it didn't eat batteries like some... battery... eating... monster. Yeah. It's a reason Nintendo survived for some time (N64's pains were not because of price), and a reason they will still survive.
I mean, yeah. Handhelds are marketed towards the younger demographic. But will a parent be more willing to buy a $150 handheld with N64-like graphics or a $300 handheld with useless features that has PS1-like graphics when the kid doesn't really care?
It depends on how developers use it. If they actually spend time and energy exploiting the second screen for unique purposes, it'll be cool.
But I have this bad feeling that other than a handful of Nintendo games and a few third parties, we are going to get a lot of mini-maps, item screens and playbooks.
I don't think there's been any indication that the DS won't be fully compatible with GB/GBA. The article itself notes that there are two slots - one for GBA (and GB?) carts and one for the new DS type (cards or carts?) - meaning that there is, at minimum, GBA compatibility.
As for having both on shelves at the same time, I don't see a big problem. Folks will still be able to drop $90 or less on a GBA with its giant library of games, and people who think the DS games are worth the investment (that's the big question mark) will pick up the DS. I don't think it's any more confusing than deciding between PSOne and PS2 units. Heck, original Gameboys were available after the Color units came out and I don't remember much confusion there.
Worst-case scenario:
Customer: "I want a Gameboy but I don't know which one to buy."
Salesperson: "We have the cheaper one that fits in your pocket with one screen, or the expensive one that fits in a purse with two screens."
Customer: "I'll take the cheaper one. Thanks!"
It has bluetooth. That means you can connect it to the internet via a bluetooth cell phone. That means you can play game on it against anyone on the internet. That means I can play advance wars with people in cars in CA while I'm in a car in NY. If Nintendo makes a move on that technology they'll be the first to have multiplayer online gaming that is also portable. If they emphasize this feature they will rock the house. Two screens only helps this out. Put the score and the chat on one screen with the action on the other. I'm buying this no matter what, poo poo to all you naysayers.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
At 25, I still enjoy portable games on occasion. The problem is that the GBA's screen is way too small for me, and requires a damn floodlamp to be able to see the screen. The GBA SP fixed the light issue, but I've been waiting until the "Nes version" is released in a month or so.
I finished playing Golden Sun a few days ago and wanted to transfer my character data to Golden Sun 2, but the silly 6-page password wouldn't work. It takes about 20 minutes to type the thing in. So, I killed two birds with one stone and picked up a Gameboy Player for my Gamecube. Now I can play my games on a 32" screen, and it supported the link cable which allowed me to link Golden Sun to Golden Sun: The Lost Age to transfer my character data.
Let's just say that I am very happy with my purchase of the GameBoy Advance Player. Graphics are largely on-par with the SNES and Genesis of old. They might be, perhaps, a bit blockier in some respects, since they are games that are designed for a portable, but it's entirely possible that I am just used to flashy 3D graphics these days.
The graphics aren't the issue though. These recent GBA games are some of the most enjoyable games that are being released on any system. Graphics can't change that. There is something special about the games of the SNES era. They were generally quite fine. A lot of that is lost today, when companies try way to hard to make games as glitzy as possible on game consoles.
If you base your game buying decisons solely on the quality of the graphics, you are missing out on a lot of great games. It's your loss though, not mine.
What will happen in 10 or so years when this system dies? Will the games, obviously designed with dual screens in mind, be able to be emulated on any future hardware? Or will the games that appear on this system be lost forever once the system gets superceded!
Wonder what the original poster was reading? They already said it was a flip open unit with 2 screens that are ontop.
There will be no 'crushing' because they are not in competition. Sony says they wont compete with the Gameboy line, Nintendo says they wont compete with the portable media player (PSP) line. They're all good.
Nintendo has been beating the "games design the hardware" drum a lot lately. If that's not just PR, it's safe to say Miyamoto-san had a lot to do with the design of this baby.
I take the train to work. Door to door, it takes me about 1:30. Of that, 15 minutes is walking to the train station.
I got *plenty* of time for games.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Ah, but a "bigger or wider screen" would be bad for several reasons. First, the unit itself would have to become larger to accomodate a larger screen. Atari's Lynx taught the industry lots of things, one of them being "don't make handheld units bulky". And second, as you make LCD screens larger they quickly become much more expensive. Small screens are cheaper because the yields are higher. I bet Nintendo gets those two screens for a lot less than one screen with the same number of pixels.
So. The design of the DS is a clever way of doubling the screen real-estate in a portable gaming platform, without making the unit too large to be successful or too expensive to manufacture. And now they've made it sound like a feature!
Just because the article says "more powerful" that doesn't mean you can imply "3D". There is no hardware comparison so there is no way to discern if the DS even has a 3D processor in it. The statement could just be stating that the DS's CPU is more complex, faster, etc... than the N64's CPU. If so, that doesn't necessarily mean that hardware accelerated 3D is a given.
The other similarity is, of course, that both Apple and Nintendo have a tendency to dig their own graves. Both stick to their own proprietary, tightly controlled hardware, which tends to both alienate developers and drive up costs. Nintendo stuck with the cartridge format after everyone else had abandoned it not because they felt it was inherently superior, but because they had better control over production. Similarly, they went with their weird little mini-DVD format for the GameCube for similar reasons.
Both also have a history of some bad management decisions: Apple's long slide into near-irrelevance in the early 1990s (finally turned around by the iMac), and Nintendo's flurry of poor decisions towards the end of the SNES's lifespan, delaying the release of the N64, sticking with an unpopular format, alienating their developers, etc. Both also get a lot of credit for "innovation" that is probably not wholly deserved: they do things well, but they borrow/appropriate/steal just as many ideas as their competition does.
Of course, both maintain a solid core of hardcore, even rabid, fanboys, and both, to their credit, have a solid core of capable first-party programmers and developers, which allows them to survive, to some extent, even with third-party groups shun them. Perhaps most interesting, while both Apple and Nintendo have have lost their once-dominance in their initial markets (personal computers and video game consoles, respectively), both managed to find a degree of salvation in the handheld field, probably (and I'm just speculating here) because their own preferences for tightly-controlled hardware and development is nowadays more suited for handheld electronics like the GBA and the iPod than for larger devices, where there tends to be a traditional push for open standards (within reason).
None of which is an attack on either company: I quite like both my iPod and my GBA SP, and have a long and generally happy history with products from both. But over the years I've become increasingly convinced that neither seems poised to slip out of their current role as solid and reliable niche player in the market, without a massive change in corporate philosophy. They're likely not going to go away, but they won't be the dominant players they once were.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
A lot of us find the small size of the GBA SP to be one of its best advantages. As for the games' qualities, if you're talking just graphics, then yes, they're SNES quality. If you're talking gameplay value, well, a big chunk of the games have original NES quality gameplay, because they're almost direct ports. And you know what, that's a great thing, because there were a lot of really great NES games. There's also some excellent SNES ports, as well as plenty of other original games.
Will two screens be all that useful for a racing game, maybe not. Is a computer mouse the an ideal steering mechanism for a racing game? Not really, but that doesn't mean mice are a bad idea. Just because two screens won't necessarily make everything better doesn't mean they have no value. And also, these two screens are fairly small, so I question how hard it will be to monitor both of them (if the game's interface is designed well, naturally). Sweeping my eyes up and down across both DS screens should take less time than looking across my 19" computer monitor.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.