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Nintendo DS Sees Voice-Chat, Demo Stations

Posted by Zonk on from the ds-gets-whole-new-bag dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing, Metroid Prime will include the ability to voice chat with other players before and after games (not during). Granted, the PSP's version of SOCOM allows for in-game chat, but this certainly is the first step." They're also going to be setting up demo download stations in retail stores, as reported in a DS Fanboy post. More details also available at the Game|Life Blog.

6 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Why not IN-GAME? by rwven · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Does anyone have a reason why they can't talking while playing? Seems to me that it wouldnt have been harder to implement it a little further... *confused*

    I guess talking BEFORE and AFTER a game is kinda pointless. Just pick up the dang phone and call them...or talk across the room you're probably both going to be sitting in anyway.

    1. Re:Why not IN-GAME? by hattig · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Probably because audio data needs to be compressed before sending it, which requires CPU time, even for basic audio compression algorithms. The DS may have two processors, but neither is that fast, and I bet that even basic compression would use up significant CPU time.

      Sure, I bet they're recording in mono 8-bit at 22kHz, so the datarate is only 22kB/s, but with a couple of people that could saturate the uplink of many home broadband connections even without the gameplay traffic. Zap in some simple voice compression and you've got a ~4kB/s data stream, much more convenient.

    2. Re:Why not IN-GAME? by rwven · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Processing power would have to be it. Very few multiplayer games exceed 10-15kbps bandwidth usage during online play. That leaves a LOT of open bandwidth for sound....

  2. Very cool. by kerrle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Even if it is a bit limited, this is still a great move.

    It also shows that Nintendo is willing to expand on what they originally offered with their Wifi service.

    Now, what would be really great is a Nintendo-branded flash card for the GBA slot - say 512MB - so that you could store demos and other content (NES/SNES games from the Rev's online service?). They'd have to digitally sign the downloads to ease piracy concerns, but it could be made fairly secure and still be cool for end users.

  3. What about the gba expansion slot? by Carlbunn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know why they haven't thought of this before, they probably have a good reason.
    Since ds games have acess to the gba slot, (as in metroid pinball's rumble pack) Why don't they create a speech pack to enable processing of voice-chat? Seems like a no-brainer to me, and it could be optional. If you want voice-chat you buy the pack, if not you don't. Guessing by the size of mp3 players and voice recorders lately, the gba card has more than enough space to create a hardware like that...

  4. Cool new stuff for the DS by AK__64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think Nintendo has a lot of opportunity to develop some innovative new things for the DS. I'm thinking it would be way easier to set up GPS, (which is coming to the PSP btw) and the comment about VoIP was dead on. I'd love to see some real video distribution (cheap anime, anyone?) in addition to what was announced today.