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Nintendo's Busy Week
GameDev.net has a wrap-up from Nintendo's busy week. They touch on the release of development kits, production delays for the DS Lite, and the ongoing DS vs. PSP war. From the article: "It seems Nintendo, who have in the past tended to rely heavily on first-party games, are eager to elicit support from third-party developers. According to some big-name developers who have had their kits for some time there have already been several versions of the kit: the first was just the console and a wired controller, while the second had a few minor tweaks and the third a boost in CPU power."
i discovered something about the DS in the past couple days that makes me seriously irked. Though it can play GBA games, and quite well, there's a catch - you can't play them multiplayer. _At all_. You can't use a wire, and you can't use the DS' inherent 802.11b support to connect between DS units for GBA games. Apparently, though the hardware is there, they've only got layer 1 and 2 protocol support, and rely on the cartridge manufacturers to include their own further protocol support (tcp/ip, etc). Absolutely fucking unbelievable that they'd cripple the unit like that. Un-fucking-believable. The unit is not, in short, a full replacement for a GBA, just sort of a way to get your fix of maybe your favorite GBA single-player games. Also, while playing GBA games, the DS part shuts off entirely, leaving one screen black - why the hell doesn't it have an option to keep alive to let you take game notes, or turn on the built-in wireless and search for pictochat sessions? That wifi harwdare is just -sitting- there while I'm playing GBA, not even -pretending- to do anything useful. What a waste.
Nintendo always does this kind of shit. They think that someone else is going to do it, and surprise, there are right now only 4 carts that support internet play. Granted, the system is only a little over a year old, but still. Is this part of some genius marketing strategy? No, sadly, I really don't think so, or Nintendo wouldn't be hurting the way it has been in the past six or more years. If they don't straighten up, they'll lose the handheld market, too. Though the PSP is far too expensive, and that's good. But what they've potentially got is a relatively cheap device with instant-on capability (if only they'd put an option to get rid of the 'don't have a seizure' nag screen) with a great cheap form of media (the DS cartridge is small and cheap, but holds a good amount of data from what I can tell). It's got a touch-screen and stylus for quick input and simple, easy to understand and mostly universally recognized controls and an intuitive software interface.
Let me interject for a moment to say that I've always had a weak spot for nintendo. I have high hopes for them always, because of the fun I had in my young days playing Gameboy and NES; I've been a video gamer since I was old enough to be held up to pac-man machines by my mother and beat the scores of the teenagers around me. Games, and Nintendo, are in my blood. Now that I'm older, I see what Nintendo -could- be doing and it shakes me to the very core. Toys not just for kids, but for everyone, with the easy to use features that appeal to kids and the complexity that appeals to adults - and you don't even have to be too geeky to like or use the stuff.
The thing could be about 1000 times what it is now, if only they'd put some guts behind it.
Imagine a GPS cart for it, or doing data analysis on it. Writable cartridges and a text reader with the ability to annotate and take notes via stylus. Home control via wifi on this thing. A remake of the Japanese-only Gameboy Sonar unit, with a sonar bobber made by nissan. Gameboy camera with a real camera, not the innovative but weak piece of trash that was the old GBCam. Doodle on your friends' faces.
You name it, the unit could do it - if they'd pull their heads out of their asses. Yes, there are some independent projects to do these things, but they'll never see the open market - nintendo tends to require a hefty financial backing and lots of previous games development experience before they'll even think of licensing to you, then SELLING their development kits to you.
Fuck you Nintendo, fuck you. You've been doing this with the gameboy since day one. Ok, the original I can let go - it was beautiful and unique. But now, technology has changed, and demand has changed. I'm not asking for a nintendo cellphone or anything. I'm just asking that you take your ideas and really be willing to stand behind them and make them into something great. Do you even _ask_ gamers what kind of features would be