Handwriting Recognition on DS

JamesO writes "Zi Corporation has announced a licensing agreement with Nintendo that will allow developers to make use of handwriting recognition. PDAs have been offering handwriting recognition for some time and with the DS's touch screen it seemed inevitable that the console would eventually gain handwriting recognition technology. An agreement between Zi Corporation and Nintendo means that DS developers will be able to utilise Zi Decuma handwriting recognition technology when creating software for the handheld."

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Nintendo is Desparate

[TheZorch]

The Nintendo DS is falling behind in sales against the superior Sony PSP. There are several reasons why the DS is lagging behind... 1. Bulky design: Many people have complained about the size and bulk of the DS. 2. Dependency on Cartridges: The age of the game cartridge has come and gone. The overwhelming success of the Sony Playstation and its "intellegent" use of CD-ROM based media effectively killed the cartridges as a viable media format for software. The reasons for this are the cost of production which are only a few cents for optical media (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) as compared to $30-$40 (each unit) for the cost of chips and cartridge manufacturing. The second limiting factor for cartridges is a very limited storage capacity. 3. Lack of Wi-Fi Internet Connectivity: The DS only allows for multiplayer games via its wi-fi connection with oher DS units but users cannot access public wi-fi drops like with the PSP and different PDA models. Because of this it would be impossible to sync data on the DS and a PC or another PDA because of this design. 4, No Support for Storage Media: The DS does not natively support any form of flash media cards for storing data. 5. Dominant Childen Marketing Angle: Nintendo has been the compnay that has marketed towards children the most out of all the other game console producers. This has hurt them in the past. Does anyone remember the "Mortal Kombat" fiasco which cost Nintendo millions in lost revenue and sparked the era where Sega became the top grossing game console maker in the early 90's? Nintendo has been slow to adapt to a changing market landscape. It is good that Nintendo still produces games that are safe for young children to play but it effects nearly every aspect of the company. They have been slow to change, it took years for Nintendo to accept optical media as storage for games in systems like the Gamecube, but instead of using a known open standard such as DVD they chose to go with proprietary format. This doesn't really have much to do with the DS, but its a symptom of what is wrong wirh Nintendo. The company is too slow to change and adapt with the current market and current technology.