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Nintendo DS To Allow Free VoIP Calls
sm4kxd writes "Gamespot is reporting that the Nintendo DS will use "built-in wireless 802.11b networking capabilities to offer voice-over-IP chat--in effect, allowing gamers to use the DS to make free phone calls at wireless network hotspots." There's also mention of a headset, so you won't look ridiculous while doing so." The article doesn't have much more information, but the "in effect" seems important; this may only allow unit-to-unit conversations, not VoIP calls to the regular telephone network.
Note to the 98% of the Slashdot populace who does not read the article: Actually, no, in fact, all that Gamestop is reporting is that an analyst named "Boris Markovich" has the THEORY that the Nintendo DS will support voice over IP. There is however no support for this theory whatsoever.
Nintendo representatives have publically stated they think it would be neat if there were a DS web browser that used the DS's built-in wireless ethernet to connect to the internet; however this does not mean that such a browser will ever actually occur, to my knowlege they've said nothing whatsoever about internet voice chat.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The government only mandates that VoIP services that act like traditional phone service must support wiretaps.
It has 2 wireless networks. One is either completely proprietary, or some derivative of bluetooth, and is basically meant to replace the gameboy link cable directly. The other is regular 802.11b Wifi, and this'll be used to connect to other people over the internet. The second is what this is meant to be used over.
The reason is simple. Let's say you're using a regular (ie: unicast) connection to link everyone to everyone else. For N players, you need N * (N-1) connections to link every player's machine to everyone else's. (Remember, you need to pipe data both ways.) The number of streams is rising almost with the square of the number of users. With that kind of exponential explosion in bandwidth needs, it doesn't take much to saturate even a broadband connection.
For multicast, one person transmits once to a virtual address, and all subscribers receive a copy of that transmission. Growth is therefore linear. N users, N streams and no more. That's at worst, however. Multicasting doesn't duplicate over a LAN, so if you have multiple computers on the same LAN, they don't each need those N streams. The one copy of all of the data will be visible to all of the users' machines.
The day that regular ISPs give everyone native multicast will be the day that multiuser gaming explodes from 2-player or 4-player (on the same high-speed LAN) to being 16-player or 32-player over the entire Internet.
(Ob. Netrek reference: Yes, 16-player games over the entire Internet already exist, and they don't need multicasting. They aren't exactly sophisticated, though. Netrek played with the graphics and gameplay sophistication of Doom 3 would likely chew up rather more bandwidth.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"I would be amazed if Nintendo allowed you to use the DS as a phone. It's just not going to happen. I think it's there to allow voice chat when playing against other people wirelessly, ala X-Box Live."
Agreed. There is no way in hell that you will ever make "free phone calls" on your DS. For you to make a telephone call, by definition your call must enter the PSTN at some point or other, and Telco companies are simply not in the habit of letting people terminate calls on their networks for free.
This so-called "story" is a load of 100% pure, unadulterated bullcrap. The best anybody should hope for is free DS to DS calls and nothing more, and even then Nintendo or somebody else is going to need to maintain a network for users to call each other over, unless people want to be dialling each other via whatever IP they have been currently allocated by the wifi hotspot operator and assuming that they actually have a real, non NAT IP address. I am thinking that they will need to do something along the lines of Skype, and I doubt very much that they would do that for free.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
What's the big deal? Free box-to-box VOIP is kinda old news at this point.
Skype.com is the only cross platform solution I'm aware of. Free for skype-to-skype PC calls. Also has an IM client built in.
They also sell "phone cards" to dial POTS from your PC. The gui has a typical touchpad interface.
They don't have POTS-to-skype yet, which needs some type of "DYN-dns" infrastructure underneath, but they are planning on offering this add-on for some monthly cost later on.
Smart move Nintendo. Use a proven technology, and enable better GAMING experience.
Did anyone really think that this will be done just so we can make free calls in hotspots?
1. Nintendo, gaming, voice chat... rings a bell? The main application will probably be to connect to other unites so people can talk to each other while they play.
2. VOIP to any number will require a gateway to the POTS which costs $$$ (where Vonage makes their money on...).
Nevertheless - pretty slick!
get a free ipod! This really works...
Voice recognition... like Mario Party 6? Or, a bit farther back, Hey You, Pikachu?
Previous examples of voice recognition in a video game can be seen in the Dreamcast's Seaman, which I have heard nothing but excellent things about, and in the N64's "Hey You Pikachu", which I have heard nothing at all about.
A somewhat more directly relevant example of how we might see voice recognition used in the DS might perhaps be teased from the news about Nintendo's upcoming Mario Party 6, which will contain about eighty-something multiplayer minigames, all entirely based around the useage of a microphone peripheral that will come with the game, and some of which will incorporate voice recognition.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Let's say you're using a regular (ie: unicast) connection to link everyone to everyone else. For N players, you need N * (N-1) connections to link every player's machine to everyone else's.
Yes, it's a real pity this is true, or we could create massive IM networks with millions of simultaneous users. That would be so cool.
Wait a minute...
Hey, I've got an idea! Let's designate one of the machines as a server, and have it collect and transmit all the data from a centralized source! Then the overall bandwidth needed still goes up effectively linearly, and only one machine needs a lot of bandwidth! That just might work!
Oh damn, looks like somebody already came up with that general idea.
</sarcasm>
Multicast is cool and all, but let's not overstate the problem it is solving. People play 64-player games of Quake 2 or 3 or various Unreals all the time, today (and I'm not into that scene so there may be even more), because a 64-player game of Unreal is a mere 64 bi-directional connections, not the 4,032 (unidirectional) you are claiming. I think you need to spend some more time studying real networking before pitching obscure solutions that by and large have yet to be needed by the common man. (You do realize that Quake et al doesn't ship the entire graphics load over the network, right? Your last paragraph seems to strongly hint otherwise...)
The article is merely the opinion of an "analyst" guessing that the DS will support VoIP. There is no official confirmation or news.
Well, except on Slashot where it gets reported as such...
Try going to another country..Europe, Japan, etc...their phone system is so useless they have to use cell phones for everything.
Troll. Many european countries have vastly superior phone systems compared to the US. You might want to read up on a little company called Ericsson, what they've done, which country they're from etc.
That said, the former socialist monopoly of Televerket/Telia in Sweden is the reason why that's so.
it's in my head