RJ Mical On The DS, PSP, Current Game Hardware

Thanks to 1UP for its interview with Amiga luminary and 3DO and Lynx co-creator RJ Mical, discussing many facets of portable gaming, including his views on the Sony PSP ("Well, the thing I dislike most about it is that I didn't get to do it"), possible disadvantages for the Nintendo DS ("The running joke in the [Fathammer] office [when touchscreens and styluses were being tested] was that we were actually funded by the screen makers; they could increase their sales, because indeed, people were always breaking their screens"), and lessons learned earlier in Mical's career ("Probably the most important thing I learned from the Lynx: never trust focus groups... They all told us to make it big, so we made it big.")

Comments

Re:Durability

[Zangief]

I remember a Miyamoto Interview on Gamespy, in which he comented that the sonic game was excesive, and that it damaged the touch screen from the intense rubbing. He said that they would create guidelines for the use of the touchscreen.

However, lately Nintendo has delivered some very resistent products. SP for example. Gamecube has a rate of failure notably lower than PS2/Xboxes (but it has its problems). So I think that the DS won't have any problem of this kind