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Nintendo Allows Japanese DS Gamers Taste of Wireless
Gamespot has the word that Nintendo will be allowing Japanese gamers a full taste of the DS' wireless capabilities. DS owners will be able to download content at kiosks in selected stores across Japan. From the article: "[Downlaoded] demos will remain on the DS units 'until power is turned off.' The one exception is some additional music for Jam with the Band. 'After turning off power, the [Jam with the Band] data remains,'"
We're going to need some bigger batteries...
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Interesting idea, first the demo disk (thanks to new CD technology in recent (mid 90s) consoles), and now the demo download, thanks to new WiFi technologies in the 00s. I wonder how this will pan out. Also, how much memory does the DS have? It's got to be quite a bit to be able to store and play demos, even if they are wiped on system reset.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
This really points toward some interesting applications of wireless in gaming. With the DS's abilities you could add wireless to games. A hide-n-seek game which requires you to travel around a city and find "virtual" objects and DL them? I'm surprised there haven't been any games announced yet that will leverage teh idea of downloading content as updates, or as part of the gameplay. Depending upon how well this works this could be the DS's real differnation between it and a PSP (though the PSP does have wireless, so they might be able to do something similar).
It seems that Nintendo wants thier gamers to go out and play games, opposed to sit in their house and play games. I guess they want to make gaming a real socail event. This could be the reason they seem to hate online gaming. They want face to face gaming. Though, this could hurt the DS in smaller, less populated areas, but this could lead to very interesting events in malls and other places with similar machines. They could have say, a DS hub in video game stores, so you can play with a lot of people. These hubs could say, keep up with your stats and the like. DS tournies, playing game that are distroed though this hub. Regardless, I hope we either get these in the states, or rig emulators that let us use wireless networks.
Nintendo could use this technique of wireless hotspots for content downloading to increase their marketing capabilities. Suppose they make a deal with some large game retailers (EB for instance). Nintendo sets up a hotspot in every EB and says that every week or so, they'll release some new content, like a new mario party style multiplater mini-game or something similar. In return, EB promotes nintendo merchandise more in some way (more shelf space, more banners, something like that). Thus every week, EB will have all the DS people coming back to their store to get the newest content, and more people in the store equals more sales. People are there with their DS's and thus thinking about nintendo when they are in a store that happens to sell nintendo merchandise, so that should translate into more sales for nintendo, and so on and so on.
...that let you store these demos, (or several,) allowing power off.
Whatever happened to "information wants to be free!!!"
Transcend Humanity. Please.
This same ability is already available, and not just within Japan. Most games offer a 'download' feature where one player with a cartridge uploads game data to other DS's, and then all the players can kick each other's butts. These booths in Japan are using the same protocol, except that once the game is uploaded, the wireless connection to the booth is turned off. I'm still waiting for Nintendo's Palm OS liscence to come to fruition, especially considering the PSP has a similar system coming.
Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?