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10 Million Nintendo DS Units Sold Since Launch
DS Gamer writes "Nintendo has announced that worldwide sales of their twin-screen handheld console the Nintendo DS have reached the 10 million mark since its launch in the United States during late November 2004. The vast majority of sales have been in the United States (4 million) and Japan (5 million) where the DS became the fastest selling games machine of all time. From the Reuters article: 'It is on the upswing of its life cycle," Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing, told Reuters in a telephone interview. She declined to give a sales forecast but said the Japan-based company would provide additional information during its upcoming quarterly financial report. Kaplan added that Nintendo's seven-week-old Wi-Fi Connection wireless gaming service has had more than 550,000 unique visitors globally.'" Commentary is available on Forbes and Gamespot.
Is the wi-fi access free or fee-based?
Mod me down im a newf (wiki)
It's good to see them stating sales rather than shipments, unlike Sony, which likes to brag about how many units have been shipped out of their factories but not about how many have actually left the store. That said, I'm a big Nintendo fan, and even I feel inclined to take these numbers as being slightly exagerated, if only by rounding up. Still, this is very, very nice to hear. Perhaps there is room in this industry for innovation after all.
That's 20 million screens!
And I'll bet 30 million lost styl-i by now...
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
The online Mario Kart DS mode is incredibly fun and addictive. That in my mind is reason enough to own a DS.
For my money, the Nintendo DS has had the best signal to noise ratio, with regards to the quality of the games, of any system in its first year since the Dreamcast. Probably even better. I've been absolutely astonished at how often I keep coming back to this little guy, especially considering how dismal it was at launch. The games are really coming at a good pace now...it is hard for a guy with a WoW addiction to keep up.
However now with all the great DS games... Im so confused! >. I want a media player, but I also want a game machine!
Yay, I have a sig.
Unfortunately, the Gamecube hasn't been selling very well lately, so hopefully this makes up for that. I have a soft spot in my heart for Nintendo, who somehow seems less evil than Sony and Microsoft.
I got a DS for Christmas, and I've been very very happy with it.
When it first came out, I wasn't really interested in it... the dual screens seemed like they were pointless, and I didn't think a touch screen would work well in games.
Well, after playing Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for a few weeks, as well as Mario Kart, Animal Crossing and Nintendogs, I'm sold... Nintendo knew what they were doing. The game developers are really taking advantage of what Nintendo offered them. I never thought having two screens would be so convenient.
And the future looks bright for the DS in the area of upcoming games...
In addition, the number of amazing games for the DS gives me great hope for the Revolution. Nintendo is doing something different again, and the fact that so many developers (not just Nintendo) have embraced the hardware of the DS leads me to believe they'll do the same for the Revolution and its controller.
I got a DS for Christmas, and while the system is great (I've been playing Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, good game, at least as good as the last Mario and Luigi), I was disappointed that there was no wi-fi connectivity outside of games. I mean, if the games connect to my wireless router and hotspots anyway, how hard would it have been to include a wireless browser in the interface outside of games?
I've heard about people trying to reverse engineer the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection so that this is possible, but I really think they should have included this in the first place. It would have had so many uses.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
You know, kinda like what happened with these handhelds. =)
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
I'm an idiot. The article I linked in the above post was way too old.
Try this article, which makes it look more promising.
Is it just me, or is it sorta strange that the DS has sold more units in Japan than in the States? Japan's population is around 125 million, while the US is set to hit 300 million people in 2006. Those numbers really say something about Nintendo's image in the States...
Ah, well, whatever. I'm very happy with my DS.
A wise man once said, "wtf h4x."
And yet I can't find a single person over the age of 18 that has one. Other than... me...
I am scientifically inaccurate.
"The vast majority of sales have been in the United States (4 million) and Japan (5 million) where the DS became the fastest selling games machine of all time." so the US is superor somehow. I know , im trolling but Japan shoul come first cause 5 is more than 4 where I come from ;)
Forbes:
"With more than five million units sold in Japan since its December 2004 regional launch, the DS has become the fastest-selling gaming machine in the country's history. Japanese gamers have also bought more than a million copies of four different titles within one year of the system's launch: Nintendogs--a game where users play with, train, pet, and wash a virtual dog, Animal Crossing, Wild World, Brain Age, and Brain Flex."
- Chris Noon
Gamespot:
"With more than 5 million units sold in Japan since its December 2004 regional launch, the DS has become the fastest-selling gaming machine in Japan's history. In another first, Japanese gamers have scooped up more than a million copies of four different titles within one year of a system's launch: Nintendogs, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Brain Age, and Brain Flex."
- Tim Surette
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Final Fantasy 4 on the DS is great. Being able to play GBA games on a lighted screen without the buttons being scrunched is always a Good Thing (tm).
Of course, FF4 GBA has tons of bugs. Berserk is buggy, slowing down your character to the point of uselessness. The airship flying is choppy (which is dumb because the GBA has better mode 7 than the SNES did). The "darkness" debuff does nothing. Worst of all, do things in the wrong order on the menu screen and your saves will be erased. (Yes that bug is in the American release too.)
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
"And yet I can't find a single person over the age of 18 that has one. Other than... me..."
Which is an important point. Playstation and Xbox tend to sell more games per unit sold due to the audience. This statistic may be skewed.
The average PS3/360 user will be early/mid20's middle/upper class males with more money to spend than the average Revolution/NDS owner.
The DS is simply a great gaming system. It doesn't try and be everything to everyone. It just does its job wonderfully. If you are looking to find people to play on the WiFi games be sure to try out WiTenDoFi.com. It is a really great way to quickly find people to play and more.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
...And better developer support
I have developed games for the GBA, DS & have access to a PSP dev kit for which we have not developed a game yet
From the development point of view, NOA is a lot easier to deal with throughout the whole process (concept submission, feedback, testing & final approval) - Sony on the other hand almost makes the developer feel like they are doing them a favor by letting them develop for the PSP - the whole process is overly convoluted and a major pain in the ass...
No one wants to say it, but one factor that I think may account for increased Nintendo DS and GBA sales is the availability of flash backup cartridges and pirated ROMs. I don't advocate this, but why pay $40 for a game that can be downloaded for free in under 5 minutes? With the Sony PSP, hackers were just happy to get a web browser working on it.
I had a Sony PSP for 7 months, and recently sold it after completing the only two good games available for it. I waited and waited, but no more good games were released.
Everyone seemed to have been predicting the demise of Nintendo, or at least becoming relegated to the status of a second-rate gaming hardware company. With two giants in close proximity (Sony and Microsoft), it's good to see that at least some semblance of balance will continue for a while longer.
I think Game Boys are illegal in Greece
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956357.html
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I will buy DS if it is not that ugly... I believe Nintendo will release an upgrade version of DS, as GBASP and GBA Micro.
Any news/rumour about Starcraft DS?
Warcraft or C&C would also be cool.
I'm 32 and I have friends in their thirties that own DS's. One even purchased a Gamecube for GC animal crossing after playing the DS one.
It hurts my hand to play it, especially when games use the shoulder buttons. Maybe I'm just developing a case of carpal tunnel.
Back in November, the Inquirer et al. ran a story that hinted at an upcoming hardware revamp for the DS. I've been putting off getting the system since. (Osborn syndrome) Anyone heard anything since?
#include <signature.h>
Yep. Honestly, GC has had a poor lineup of new games lately. Yeah, Mario Strikers is supposed to be good. And i think there was another Mario Party in there somewhere. But really, the GC has had little worth buying come out since Resident Evil 4 (which was a LONG time ago now). It doesn't even get many ports anymore.
It isn't odd for a platform to slow down at the end of its lifespan (although perhaps this is a bit extreme), and I'm sure things will be different when Revolution comes. I can't wait to get one.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Anyone who has kids knows you are far more likely to be spending money on them than yourself. It is the nature of the beast.
Basically, your above statement would only be true if the majority of the middle class had no children. If that was the case the entire economy would be due to crash in about 10 years. (It is totally *not* true, although there *are* indeed fewer children being born in the middle class than ever before, there are *still* lots of em).
You're right, it's probably less important with console hardware than software. But still, going by sell-through numbers is important. It prevents channel stuffing, for starters. You can stuff the channel (load up retailers with equipment) at the end of quarters so as to bring next quarters sales into this quarter. When you do this, it creates a misleading impression, especially because next quarter's true sales can't even begin until you sell off last quarter's stuffed stock.
Sometimes companies have been known to stuff the channel and take the product back in the next quarter! It's just a scam. Going by sell-through eliminates this.
Additionally note that going by shipped units also makes it possible to do other shenanigans like add new retailers to "increase sales". If you add a new retailer, you can count their shipments to fill inventory as sales, even if the units never sell at all. So you can again manipulate sales numbers, or at least the timing of them.
Additionally, you can update your model to get more sales (shipments). If they announced the new PSP with 802.11g or 15% longer battery life or something, they could make it a new model, and the retailers all have to order the new one to put it on the shelves, even if the old ones never sold. Eventually retailers do get tired of this, but they can do it occasionally to jump up the numbers.
Given that the name of the game in video games is to get an installed base out there to attract developers and make royalties from software sold, all these tricks can make the difference between success and failure for a console and so are likely employed by every company to varying degrees.
So it's great to be able to try to null those tricks out as much as possible. For example, with the Xbox 360 launch in Japan.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The article (for those who read it) said:
The company's Game Boy Advance SP, the newest version of Nintendo's popular hand-held system, sold 4.6 million units in North America in 2005, compared with 7.6 million in 2004.
The GBA Micro is newer than the GBA SP.
Both are darn cool as well.
Also, chalk another > 20 year old DS owner here... Not a kiddy system IMO...
"WEP Key is a security setting for your router. WEP is the only security that is compatible with the Nintendo DS Wi-Fi Connection. You will need to set your router for WEP security -- or remove security on your router -- to use the Nintendo DS at this access point." Nintendo
I wish they supported WPA. WEP sucks and no security is not a good option for home use.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
4 million in Japan and 5 million in the US leaves just 1 million sales in the rest of the world, presumably mostly in Europe. In terms of market size, Europe is pretty big, I wonder why the DS sales are so much lower?
Posting AC since I already modded this story.
It seems there is a serious infestation of Microsoft astroturfers here on Slashdot. This story has nothing to do with Microsoft, but any comments with anything remotely negative towards Microsoft is getting mod-bombed down below zero.
This has to be some sort of organized effort, no one or two random Xbox fans have enough mod points to do the mass carpet bombing of console threads that has been going on here for the last few months.
I have two neices, 8 and 10. They each got a DS for Christmas with Nintendogs. One thing that is majorly annoying with the multiplayer, at least on the dogs, is that it is not concurrent. The slave DS just makes a second dog having the parameters from the master DS, but that's the end of it. The dog that lives on the master is doing completely different things on the two DSes. I wonder if this is also true for other collaborative, multiplayer games. Do you just play the same game that the master DS is playing, but in a completely different context, or do you actually get to interact with other players?
Here in Japan (Nagoya), I see DSes everywhere. Toy stores and department stores have big DS (and Gameboy) sections, but I've yet to notice any PSPs, though I suppose they must be tucked away somewhere. I also see a lot of kids carrying around DSes, but again, I've never even seen a PSP here. I did see a PSP subway ad once.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
I am 24 and I own the system . Play animal crossign wild world online and ask the age of anybody who comes to your town. You will find that most of them are older.
I have about 7 people on my friends list and they are all over 21 actually.
Erm. Huh?
..
You have developed for NDS and GBA but not PSP, and are saying the PSP development cycle is difficult. what the?
Having developed on both, and knowing many coders who have developed on both, the general consensus is that Nintendos support is horrendous. Their devkits - erm.. half assed at best (did you even have a GBA Nintendo devkit? - they are slower to use than the USB Carts!!!). And the NDS systems are really no better. Then if you want to talk about features the DS and GBA are sorely missing many many things that devvers have been asking to put on their ARM chips for YEARS!!.. an FPU for example - if you are a Nintendo developer, visit their forums, and read the _huge_ list of people asking for this (btw ARM chips with FPU are not much costlier either!!).
Then there is the VRAM issues, the DMA issues.. man.. talk about a complete mess. And everyone thought theyd clean it up with the DS.. bzzzt. Even the damn 3D is an utter pain.. two sets of normals?? come on!! After spending a single day devving on PSP.. I was hooked. We ported our code in just a couple of days.. and the huge amount of extra resources we now have, means our systems can have many extra features added.. how the heck can you say that is bad?
Console.. and handheld wise, the DS is a horrible dinosaur of hardware (dont get me started on IPC..) and shows how much Nintendo listen to their developers. Also, since I changed my IDE to code::blocks (I develop PC, PSP, DS all from the one IDE now.. its nice) I dont have to deal with the el-stupido metrowerks anymore (although I did like their debugger.. but their IDE sucks to hell).
As for submission and feedback etc.. I really dont think you have done many games before at all. Nintendo simply give you a tick or a cross, if you pass or fail. With a nice doc explaining.. what silly bit of crap they didnt like. Sony are NO different in their QA.. its exactly the same.. detailed report.. about some obscure text siting in the wrong spot.
Also, you NEVER submit concept submissions to Nintnedo unless you are a tier 1 developer - which is a handfull of the top of the line developers, and they actually get to write their own rules for QA.. I have seen so many breeches of the QA docs in the 1st tier games.. but its because they can. As a 3rd party developer, you go through a publisher, and guess what, you dont deal with Nintendo at all, or Sony. You simply get their reports and thats it. The publisher does all the submission, feedback, testing and approvals with Nintendo.
The first thing I thought of when you said that was the headline: Outraged parents demand parental controls. Think about this for a second? You are taking a gaming machine that you can trust your kids to drive around and jump on evil snails to kill them and opening up the potential for anything- porn, news, viruses, scripting, java, etc. Why would you do that as Nintendo? It's a parental control nightmare and a security nightmare.
The second argument is why would you go outside its intended purpose? It's a gaming handheld machine with a few buttons and a touch-screen. You'd have be bring in typing (keyboard) for URLs, viewing of various image formats, scripting, and other joyous necessities (ever tried turning off javascript and surfing... you won't get far). If someone wants the web, they have a cell phone and a computer.
If I recall correctly, isn't chat built in though?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
If you can wait till then, there will be an update
Something that a lot of people missed when the DS and PSP were introduced, was the price point.
Taking a look at Argos (major UK retailer, the kind of place many people buy these things from)...
* PSP : 180GBP
* Nintendo DS : 90GBP
PSP games start at 30GBP and go up to 35. DS games start at 15 and go up to 30.
The DS is not selling to the kind of people who will put down 200quid for a graphics card just to play the latest blood-fest, it sells to the huge number of casual gamers who want something fun. For the price of a PSP you can buy a DS and three games.
The DS also sells to parents buying presents and I imagine it did a hell of a lot better over christmas than the PSP.
This is exactly what happened with the original gameboy. When I was a kid I, and most of my friends had gameboys. They may not have been colour like the Sega Gamegear or Atari Lynx, but our parents could afford them, the batteries lasted an age, and the games were fantastic. Colour would have been great, but it wasn't worth the money (and the power drain)
Sheer brute force power is not everything when it comes to these sorts of machines. Nintendo understands this. The handheld market is not just a portable version of the mainstream. It is a whole other beast.
Paul Leader
I have developed several titles for GBA & DS - we can argue all day about which system has better specs and hardware but at the end of the day, as a developer/publisher I/we definitely prefer dealing with NOA than Sony -
;) Been using it for quite some time, so havent really tried anything else
All that aside you made a good point in regards to IDE - I am still using metrowerks
IMO, the whole development process and dealing with account managers etc. is a lot more amiable with NOA as opposed to Sony
I assume you are a 3rd party dev? As we do concept submissions for all NOA titles we have developed/published
I do suppose other developers may have a different story, but in our studio we prefer dealing with NOA
My opinion is the stylus. I think - just like the Nintendo Revolution is aimed at non-gamers by giving them a more familiar control (the remote control thingy) the stylus allows non-gamers a more simple interface (a pen in this case). The funny thing is when the DS first came out it was the stylus that made me overlook the device for many months - I had dismissed it as gimmicky. Well, between train your brain and the kick-ass game "under the knife" I am a firm believer that the stylus has allowed totally new genres of games to be created.
The final result, both my sister and my girlfriend kicked my ass in the math and memory games. My all time best score for 20 math problems was 17 seconds, where my sister had 15 seconds, and my girlfriend had 14 seconds. My mom came in with a respectable 28 seconds. So for all those years the three constantly derided me for being a gamer they finally got a taste of the addictive nature of games. :)
Several months ago, when a Nintendo rep was asked about the slow GCN release schedule, he/she told the journalist that many developers were instead using the GameCube-based kits to get a jump on developing games for the Revolution.
Given a choice between developing for a machine whose time is almost up, and developing for a new machine with seemingly huge potential, I'd take the latter as well. Once those NDAs are lifted, don't be surprised if the list of games is better-than-expected.
I can imagine the dialogue now.. {initiate dream sequence}
Nintendo Fan: "Ubisoft, where ya been? No releases for a while - what's up?"
Ubi: "Well.. you did see our E3 booth, right? The Revolution games there? We were making those instead of GCN games. We hope you understand."
The DS's numbers are impressive, but we aren't anywhere close to the peak of the system.
Great games like Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, and Nintendogs, and some interesting titles like Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney and XX-XY, have shown consumers that the touch screen is not a gimmick. If I recall correctly, NiFi already has half a million users, and that's after a month of NiFi. By comparison, doesn't XBox Live have a little over a million after at least a year?
There are still hot games coming to the DS to spur sales, too. The Pokemon series has consecutively been a hot seller, oftening bumping hardware unit sales with its release. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, the first regular RPG entries to the series on the DS, is due out sometime this year. It has been confirmed that these games will use NiFi to trade Pokemon, chat, and, most importantly, battle. The trade-and-battle theme of Pokemon has screamed for MMO features, and the DS is the first machine equipped and ready to take the charge. (This will be the game that gets me to buy a DS.)
If Pokemon is not your thing, you're not out of luck. Metroid Prime: Hunters, the much delayed multiplayer FPS, might be right up your alley. The Metroid Prime series has had strong sales, and when this game finally releases, it's going to boost sales (sorry for the pun) once again. (I'm uncertain, but I believe part of the delay was to add NiFi to MP:H).
And remember, we're still waiting for a Zelda game. While one has been confirmed in process, no details have been released. Did someone say Twilight Princess followup?
It's successes like this that allow Nintendo to go to the edge with new ideas like the Revolution.
Disclaimer: Yes, I am a fanboy, and my rantings may be taken as such.
Most likely they didn't want to do battle mode over IP because it'd be a lot more sensitive to lag issues than race mode.
Consider: there's not -too- much in race mode that matters, apart from whether your opponent is in front of you, or behind. If you see lag in race mode, most likely it'll mean your opponent's position jumps around (or even that they fall off the track, and mysteriously reappear on it without losing time) - but at a very basic level, the needs of the race are met, in that the relationship between how long it's taking you to get around the track, and how long it's taking them to get around the track is maintained. Every time you get a sync packet from an opponent everything's right with the world again. As for powerups, usually in race mode if you're in a position where you can effectively use a powerup, it won't be too sensitive to lag unless the two players are really right on top of each other. (Drafting doesn't work too well in a laggy game, of course, and in that situation it's tough to say whether a banana peel or other weapon dropped behind the lead player will hit the trailing player...) I guess you could say that while powerups still work in a laggy game, the "combat" aspects of the race mode are those which suffer the most from the lag.
Battle-mode is, of course, completely combat-oriented. The game isn't oriented around a circuit in which there is an "ahead" and "behind", rather everyone's free to race around and try to fire weapons at each other. It could still work but given that the relationship between players' positions is much less consistent than in a race, and since the entire battle game revolves around powerups and direct kart-to-kart interactions, it would be harder to give a good battle game experience than it is to give a good race experience.
I love the online race mode, too - it's sort of frustrating sometimes that you can't communicate with your opponents over the link, but other times it's not. It keeps people focused on the game itself rather than all the bickering that often goes with other online games in between rounds. I'm glad they allow the custom emblems, though - it gives people who want to be a jackass an opportunity to do so, but also allows personalization. Really, though, given the potential for abuse I'm surprised they did it at all.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Not to take anything from this, but I can't help but think that a significant part of Nintendo's success with the DS is due to the fact that the PSP turned out to be an utter failure. The expectations were a lot higher for the PSP and Sony failed to deliver. The DS struggled initially, there's wasn't much compelling for the DS at the start and I think people were still hoping for something good on the PSP. There's nothing but crap on that system while the DS has Nintendo's expertise in gaming supporting it. Nintendo made some sound decisions, going for a lower pricepoint and producing a relatively rugged system, unlike the fragile PSP. It's portability isn't hindered by slow, delicate optical media.
On the other hand, if Sony had put together a strong library of games I think the DS would have had some serious competition. Instead it looks like they considered the PSP to be nothing more than a portable PS2, so instead of producing unique titles for the console they resorted to porting games people had already played. It didn't help that EA was responsible for much of the console's library.
I certainly don't think it's the dual screen that made the DS successful. The console's success is due to Nintendo's impressive ability to know what's fun. If you want good gameplay you can't really go wrong with Nintendo. I still see the dual screen as a gimmick, but Nintendo has used it to great effect, even if many of their games aren't much more than glorified flash games, the likes of which we've played for years.
Nintendo understands that gameplay is the core of any game. Gameplay makes a game good, not ansiotropic filtered, pixel shaded, bloom-lit nonsense. I think consumers have been spoiled by developers touting cutting edge graphics in games. While there's a lot of crap out there, there are also some great games available with impressive graphics, so it isn't like people can't have both. This is going to be detrimental for the Revolution. I doubt it's unique controller, which a competitor could easily replicate, is going to provide any kind of advantage. Nintendo will likely make good use of it, but if other developers can't be bothered or have to do too much downgrading to get their games to run on the Revolution that system is likely to suffer the same fate as the Gamecube.
Within Nintendo's own sphere of games there isn't much variety, and worse yet, I think they're over-using their properties. How many more times can they reuse the Mario, Zelda and Metroid characters? They're playing it safe by sticking to characters everyone knows. It's time for the to get adventurous and come up with some new characters.
I have some satisfaction in seeing Sony get screwed, but I don't think Nintendo's success is necessarily due to some great innovation on their part.
Ok, I admit. I padded the WiFi user amount by an extra 2 users.
My first DS I bought on Black Friday had a nice blue dead pixel on the bottom screen. I returned it.
My second DS had a red dead pixel in the middle of the top screen. I returned it.
My third DS has a greeen dead pixel in the middle of the bottom screen. I still have it because I wanted to actually get a chance to play the damn thing.
I went online with all three of those DS's and 2 have since been returned as defective to Target.
So there you have it, I personally padded the number by 2!
A new GBA SP just came out after the GBA Micro. The new GBA SP has a back lit lcd (like the gba micro and ds) instead of the front lit lcd in the old gba sp.
It's good to still see Nintendo doing well after chasing the audience of gamers they want instead of the broadest market possible, perhaps this will point to a more fun generation of games from them focusing on the user experience rather than trying to keep up with Sony and MS
Business Voyeur
No one wants to say it, but one factor that I think may account for increased Nintendo DS and GBA sales is the availability of flash backup cartridges and pirated ROMs.
By that logic the Gamepark 32 should have outsold the GBA, by virtue of its ability to play GBA, SNES, NES, etc. ROMs via emulation on normal, off-the-shelf (SD) flash media.
The GBA is easy enough to homebrew or pirate - just get a flashcart from a seller willing to sell it. The DS is a little more involved. First you need to get past the unit's security while in DS mode, using modified game code to shift execution off to the ROM locations of the GBA slot. From there you can run DS code from the GBA slot, but to actually make it convenient you'd then also have to re-flash your unit's ROM while holding the internal ROM protect jumper closed...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
The answer is of course no. The PSP pricepoint is what's selling DS's. Not too mention Nins success in the handheld market. Keep in mind nin fanboys, the DS doing well says nothing about Revolution sales.
Alot of people ague to me that 'Yes, the DS may have good games, but the PSP can play DVDs!' which annoys me as, if you buy a DS you can afford to buy a small travel DVD player with built in screen, that will play DVDs, unlike the PSP, which only plays UMDs. People don't seem to realise that the PSP is a little small to fit a DVD in. I even have GBAMP, 2 x 512 compact flash cards and FlashMe and am using moonshell to watch video and listen to music on my DS. And with Advance Wars and Mario Kart. It's a much better console games-wise. The PSP has only two advantages. Better Screen, Better Graphics. And, To be honest, I like having two screens without any dead pixels, and with the gameplay of the DS, I don't care about the graphics either.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
I think that the problem after being a Videogame industry consumer and enthusiast is that gamers don't really know how to debate about these kinds of stories.
You can debate about the quality of the games or
You can debate about the financial welfare of a company(*)
People just usually mix them.. person X might say, "Nintendo is for kids" then person Y replies, "But they're making money" - this is when you detect an argument that will go south.
It is true that nintendo is the most profitable of the videogame companies, but also the one that is selling less (IN THE US) in the TV console market - GC development support is lacking due to the current multiplatform development model. That doesn't mean that GC users aren't getting more utility for their games than their Xbox or PS2 counterparts.
After many years of Fanboyism, I realized that the best is owning all consoles and picking the best games. However, once you work, a wife/gf, and kids, time is a premium, so I stick to what Nintendo has to offer and just rent a system whenever something special comes out for another console.
Oh well... now flame on!
(*)Note that I didn't mention the debate about the capabilities of consoles because that is basically irrelevant. That is why Sony and Microsoft's strategy is to generalize (media center), rather than specialize (videogame console). Nintendo knows this, and sticks to their core competencies- MS and Sony know that fighting nintendo there would be infeasible over time because they'll have to concede too much potential profit to the developers to encourage them to develop for their consoles.
Poor xbox 360 got beat out by DS for holiday shopping in Japan. Very little people want the xbox 360 in Japan so much that they are lowering the prices.
Can I bum a sig?
Ain't that the truth!
Well, I bought a Nintendo DS with the sole purpose of playing Nintendogs; the game itself is awesome, it has us drooling and really, really impressed, and is topic for another discussion. The console itself has a great design, I'm quite impressed with the features, specs, design and ergonomics. I then bought Mario Kart DS and I now think that online play is the DS's killer app; it's tremendously fun to duke it out online with people, and I can only imagine how much fun it would be to play with people on a LAN setup. I decided to steer away from Nintendo after I hated my N64, but the NDS just won me over again.
I do know a lot of people in their 30s who also own a DS, and they bought it from word of mouth and actually having played one. Hopefully the way the DS is selling is a preview of what is to come with the Revolution. I look at the PSP and XBox360 and I just am not excited. Sure, they have some amazing hardware. Blazing processors, awesome widescreen goodness. But the games... The gameplay.. It's just the same thing in a newer package. With the DS i'm drawing jumps for Kirby to launch off of to finish the level! I'm drawing spirals to have him avoid being hit! I haven't had this much fun since the 2600.
Millions of PSP owners are now scrambling to find a DS emulator.
I bought a PSP several months ago, a used one with 1.5. I admit, I haven't been playing it as much as I thought I would be. Only have Burnout for it, but 99% of my playtime is with console emulators.
You think I could trade it in at gamestop or something for a new DS? I want access to cheap games, and the GBA seems to have plenty, while there isn't bupkis for the PSP commercially.
Besides, just about every game I am interested in emulating I have on original hardware already. :)
Can you practically take your Super NES, television set, and 2-hour battery with you on the bus or train? This is the advantage of an open system such as GP2X or a semi-open system such as Nintendo DS (even the new v4 that needs a PassMe2 to flash it).
I'll use the chance to plug the game that has been keeping me awake since Xmas: Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! is a great Japanese rythm game that is unfortunately impossible to localize (without redoing half of it). Still you don't need to know a word of Japanese to enjoy it nor to crack yourself up at its hilarious antics. But those are just icing on the cake of an extremely addictive game that puts the hardware to great use.
You'd have be bring in typing (keyboard) for URLs
Pictochat manages to incorporate a touch keyboard, or somebody could make a gesture recognition system similar to Palm's Graffiti.
viewing of various image formats, scripting, and other joyous necessities
Which were implemented on my 1995 Mac with a 75 MHz processor and 8 MB of RAM. Though the DS has only 4 MB of RAM, the DS's OS is also much more lightweight.
ever tried turning off javascript and surfing... you won't get far
Thanks to governments' accessibility initiatives, you might be surprised at how far you can still get in Lynx or w3m. Most of the web that you'd want to read in a mobile environment (news sites, blogs, forums, references, etc) follows the HTML page model, not the AJAX app model.
If someone wants the web, they have a cell phone
Too expensive per month. Most devices sold as mobile phones speak only GSM-family or CDMA-family protocols over monopoly-licensed and leased spectrum, not Wi-Fi over unlicensed spectrum.
and a computer.
A notebook computer is much more expensive to purchase and much larger than a Nintendo DS system, even one modded to take homebrew (which effectively doubles the price to $260).
After Gamecube, I figured that the Revolution would be another dismal failure.
How was the Nintendo GameCube console a failure? Last time I checked, it was the PS2 and the Xbox that failed to turn consistent profits for their makers.
Do you think that any other factor besides price is the reason why Nintendo is selling more than Sony PSP?
The GBA actually doesn't have mode 7 at all. Rather, features of mode 7 are imitated by using the CPU to change the projection of a layer at each scanline.
Which by the way is exactly how the Super NES did mode 7 as well. Mode 7 is just affine-textured quads as wide as the screen and either as tall as the screen (Actraiser transitions and Cameltry/On the Ball gameplay) or as tall as one scanline (gameplay in F-Zero, Pilotwings, Super Mario Kart, etc.).
Useful Super NES graphics modes: three traditional layers, or one mode 7 layer. Useful GBA graphics modes: four traditional layers, or one mode 7 layer and two traditional layers, or two mode 7 layers.
The only thing that almost interests me on the PSP is Lumines.
You can drop even that now.
People don't seem to realise that the PSP is a little small to fit a DVD in.
I think they're talking about ripping a DVD (possibly breaking the DMCA or foreign counterpart in the process), transcoding it down to 300 MB, and sticking it on a 1000 MB Memory Stick PRO Duo card. The PSP advocates like to hype up the fact that the PSP with three fair-used movies fits into a trouser pocket better than a portable DVD player does.
I just got the GB Micro and I love it but these wireless games look too good to pass up!
my nephew had one for Christmas and the wireless servers weren't amazing - slow and not enough players... I consoled (pun intended, sorry) him that the service was new and likely to be flooded with all the new consoles sold over xmas, and it would probably get better.
mind you, it probably didn't help that we were borrowing bandwidth off a neighbour's open access point (which half the street seems to be abusing from what kismet told me from the client list :-)
[yes, I did contact their ISP to tell them]
I used to be very much a nintendo fanboy, until I realised it was alot better to just go with consoles you like, rather than a company you like. But I still found myself liking Nintendo. I do have an Xbox (non-360) and it's good. But all I have it for is a) Halo and b) Modding. In terms of games, my DS and gamecube have been alot better, but the Xbox was a beauty to mod. And Halo is a very good game. I think that Nintendo tend to be better, but alot of people complain of me being a nintendo fanboy now, even though I'm not. Genuinly nintendo seem to be a better company. I also have a dust covered PS2. But recently Gamecube games have been lacking, in fact, most games have been lacking, except for the DS.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
hey sexual asspussy wat kind of crap is that huh? this is not the place for psychos like u so kindly take ur views to some junkyard on the internet and spare slashdot.. got it??
Actually if you read to comments that have been posted on that article it seems that the story is a load of bull.
Look at the PSP's list of games worth getting, then look at the DS's.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
I own a DS (chalk me up in the over 20 category) and I absolutely adore it. The sheer inventiveness of the use of it's native features like the microphone, dual screens and clamshell like opening mechanism are what do it for me. Anyone who's played Another Code: Two Memories (although I believe it was called a number of different things) will recognise this; opening and closing the DS to emulate stamping, reflecting the screens against each other to see a hidden message..
;)
Plus the fact that there are plenty of games, even better ones on the horizon, and that they're all cheap. No, it doesn't play movies or music, but I have an iPod, I don't need another MP3 player - I'd rather have a well rounded gaming system. Which the DS is.
But then I'm probably classified as a screaming fangirl so take it with a pinch of salt
I can take all the re-releases on GBA.
I have an authentic Super NES cartridge of On the Ball by Taito on my lap as I submit this. Please link to an online store where I can buy the GBA re-release of the same title.
I like 2D adventure games a lot more than those damn 3d ones that everyone is touting now, what better way to show support for a genre than "BUY" it rather than "scab" it?
2D adventures? A friend has a copy of Maniac Mansion by Lucasarts for PC. Please link to an online store where I can buy the re-release for GBA, Nintendo DS, or PSP.
After searching and failing to find the links I asked for, now you know one reason why people turn to emulation: their favorite titles have not been officially re-released for any handheld system.
and most importantly they are "LEGAL" for me to have/use in every sense of the word
If you buy a copier, then private space-shifting of ROMs is certainly covered under existing fair use exemptions, which the United States, many European countries, and now Australia have recognized in statute and/or judicially.
ROFL SEXUAL ASSPUSSY!!
Sign me up for one of those please!
It can also play videos with the same add-on, but that's not why I bought a DS, nor is it a selling point. (I'll leave it up to you to find out how a DS can play music and video.)
I own a DS and love it and I will eventually buy a PSP, but "not" for music playback. (I tried Sony for music and compared to Apple's iPod, their products are atrocious. ATRAC3 is Satan's spawn.)
It's not the price, it's the poor selection of games for PSP and a few other factors that make the DS a much better game machine and why it's not selling as well. Give me a game worth buying and my love for portables will have me owning a PSP. But even then, it will never replace my DS.
The DS cost less than the Game Boy Advance to develop for.
If anyone has the costs of the GBA and DS development, feel free to print them up.
Gamers are the primary audience of portable gaming systems regardless of what market analrapists claim. Gamers do not want to pay $300 for a portable movie player that can play a handful of crappy games or pay $30 to watch Spiderman 2 on the train. Gamers that prefer a greater and better game library will buy the GBA or DS.
They actually sell PSPs at 7-Elevens in Japan. I asked my girlfriend (who works part-time at one) about this, and she said she never sold any PSPs in 1 and half years...
.... allows you to browse the Internet using WiFi...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sexual Asspussy has been around before here you figured out how to type this site name into the address bar properly.
I think u are the one who needs to take ur ass elsewhere to a board where someone gives a shit.
On second thought, maybe you should report him to AOL.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
You win it!
PS - what happened to your sig? I liked the hiragana.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I got a DS with Christmas money and 6 games (one of them being the Mario Kart that came with the system). Meteos, Advance Wars: DS, Puyo Pop, Bomberman, and Zookeeper. They're so addictive I've been playing less and less World of Warcraft and more of the DS games. Nintendo very much has a winner on their hands with this. I can't wait for the Revolution to come out with all kind of crazy neat things to do with the DS as a controller.
I was about to type up the translation when I hit refresh and saw your post.
I amaze my friends a lot because I can translate Japanese message posts. They think I know Japanese. Nope, I just know how to read the letters (kana). The language I *really* know is Babelian (and no not FF4's Babel). A lot of people complain how Babelfish doesn't work with Japanese. I understand it just fine, so all I'm doing is reordering some words so my friends can understand it... I use the ability to read kana to fix up the many English words in kana that Babelfish doesn't know.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
The problem with that was cramming a Z80 processor into it. The GBA has a Z80 and an ARM7. The DS has an ARM9 (for DS games) and an ARM7 (for GBA games.) The Z80 is what runs Gameboy and Gameboy Color games. It could be they just couldn't fit a Z80 in there at a reasonable cost in terms of materials and R&D. Or Nintendo just wanted to obsolete the old games, since they no longer make money from them, and have no incentive to prop up sales of used GB/GBC games.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
If you are one of the 10 people who actully only have the roms for the games you own, [and you want a re-release on a newer platform,] You are a MINORITY.
Oh great. Now the "information wants to be free" crowd will start phrasing the arguments for copyright rollback in terms of civil rights for minorities.
Last time I checked ROM copiers cost a lot
They're not always expensive. You can get a GBA ROM copier for about $20 if you own a GBA, GBA SP, or Game Boy Player. The "MBV2" or "Flash2Advance Linker" comes as a cable where one end connects to the PC and the other end connects to the GBA's serial port. I'd imagine that now that the NES patents have expired, mass production might become available for NES copiers.
and weren't particularly available down at radio shack.
Matter of fact, anybody who has soldered before can build an XBOO cable (similar to MBV2) out of a DB25 connector, a GBC link cable, and a few resistors and diodes, all parts available at a local RadioShack store.
If you feel dealing with all that so you can play Pong, ET, and your "friend's" copy of Maniac Mansion
Where did Enemy Territory come into this discussion? ;)
They great thing about video game systems is that despite all of the hype at launch -- in the end, they either sink or swim based on the quality (and in some ways quantity) of games produced for them. With the Dreamcasr being the exception -- it crashed even with quality games.
I don't follow the handheld market much since the SP. Based on the hype for the PSP, and the success of the PS2 -- I thought that it was sure to have play for a while -- but it is pretty evident of late that it is hurting. Some of it seems to be lack of quality games, and some of it seems to be a good ole' fasioned ass whoopin from the "underdog" DS that seemed to be at deaths door when the PSP launched. All it took was 3 or 4 good games for the DS to rise from the ashes (it seems).
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.