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Warp Pipe Group May Bring Online Gaming to DS
dolphin558 writes "Warp Pipe may be in partnership with Nintendo to bring online gaming to the Nintendo DS! What's more, the project is supposed to add a "social aspect" to online gaming that hasn't been seen before. A press conference is scheduled for October 7th. I cannot wait!" This would seem to partially confirm earlier speculations, and partially explain Warp Pipe's decision earlier this year.
But it's portable, so you can leave your room if you choose.
i still can't help but worry about battery life.
Maybe nintendo isnt marketing to gaming fanatics. Maybe there is a large population of people who enjoy games, but dont make them a cental part of their lives. Just guessing here.
That's largely because the PSP looks more and more like the next Game Gear. It's more powerful than the DS, but it's also likely to be far more expensive. Now with the battery life problem being shifted to the developers, it's almost certain the DS' card media and low-power ARM chips will beat the PSP in that vital category.
Add in the backwards compatibility and wireless networking and the DS looks like a portable juggernaut. The PSP might do well with Sony's muscle, but unless some new portable market has emerged I have a hard time believing it'll do better than second place.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I'm so glad to see respect from the institutional gaming companies shown toward the homebrew exploiters. People wanted Online gaming, Warp Pipe gave it, and Nintendo applauded with alleged business relations. We've come a long way from Bleem!
Judging from some of the stuff at game cubicle forums, I have some guesses what they could do.
They could use 802.11 and multiple DS's as repeaters. I bet the protocols for DS games won't take up much bandwidth so repeating 20 other packets won't be too bad. You could probably play against people X hops away.
The other thing (something I've already done) is WiFi tracking. It would be relatively easy to do wifi tracking of people based on relative positioning and varying signal strengths. You could create a wifi based compass pointing you to anybody with a DS nearby (given 3 people with DS nearby). This could make for some interesting discovery ideas.
There was some cellphone game that was big in Japan that was on Slashdot awhile back that used real places (based on cell tower "gps") to affect game play. This could be another application of a similar principle.
This could be real fun if dealt with properly. I'd be impressed if they get this down right.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
So hang on, Nintendo are taking note of the interesting work done by the community, and instead of just copying that work, actually hiring the people who did it.. and this is bad?
Also not a first - they did the same with the backlight technology for the SP.
fortune -o
All Nintendo does is gaming. Their entire life is based off of how well their gaming consoles do. You point out that Microsoft and Sony both have other departments that handle their guaranteed company profit, so both can do whatever they want and if it ends up bombing they can patch that wound up with wads of cash from their other divisions. Nintendo can't do that, so they need to make sure the DS is consumer friendly. Nintendo can't afford to pull a Virtual Boy now when they're in a tug of awar with Microsoft while trying to catch up to Sony. Nintendo could afford to pull a Virtual Boy when they actually did it because it was at the console turn before the N64 when they were still the kings of gaming. When their only competition was Sega, a gaming only company as you imply, they could ignore the end user and not care about how crappy their commercials were. Word of mouth and the idea that all of gaming could be termed as "playing Nintendo" took care of that for them.
Now, when more and more people term gaming as "playing Playstation," the Big N's in a tight spot. And you wonder why, even after pointing out how much of a tight spot they're in in your very own post, Nintendo doesn't act like the stuck up, my-way-or-the-highway jackasses they did in the pre-N64 era? They've evolved into a new company and they know now they need to market better, and if by collaborating with people who essentially are saying "Nintendo, your Gamecube internet connectability is abysmal, and we've done something about it" means they're "teaming up with shady tool developers" then Valve buying up the Counterstrike guys could be termed as "hiring some shady mod programmers" even though the decision is the number one reason why Valve is so filthy rich today.
Hi, how is Bizarro-World these days?
I think you'll find that the Gameboy IS Nintendo's bread and butter these days. Please see this article for a review of the numbers. Please note that these numbers are 6 months old. You'll clearly see that the Gameboy outsells the Cube 3 to 1.
Just because you don't see people roaming the streets playing the GBA frantically doesn't mean they're not out there. Most people play them at home for convenience.
There are so many of you that just put everything down, anyhting new that comes in, you have to put it down. Don't you guys know anything? Why are you so negative about these great things coming to our consoles, PCs, and handheld peripherals? Geez, I better not see any of you enjoying the PSP or DS or any console if you're going to be so negative about anything great that happens to it. Jesus, you'd think this was a 2Yr old Baby convention. Some get them their warm bottle of "shut the fuck up"
Flat Screen TV for F