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New Nintendo DS to Include Camera, Music
BobB-nw writes "Watch out Apple, here comes Nintendo. Nintendo plans to launch a new version of its popular DS portable gaming device with a camera and music player function, according to a report in the Sunday edition of The Nikkei Business Daily. The new version will have better wireless capability for connecting to the Internet and will cost under $189, the report said. It will be offered first in Japan, it said. The DS first went on sale in 2004, and a second version, called the DS Lite, debuted two years later in 2006. Both have sold extremely well, with worldwide sales of the DS products at 77.5 million units as of the end of June this year."
Any piece of technology will advance until it has an MP3 player function. This includes household appliances, and, apparently, the DS.
Everything is subjective.
Calling the new DS "Gameboy DS" is incorrect. The GameBoy line of portables ended with the GameBoy Advance. The DS is known simply as the "Nintendo DS".
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...the camera will be useful for any games? Something along the lines of how it was used with some Gizmondo games, or that weird card game with the PS2 EyeToy? And what about the media player functionality? Could this herald the appearance of games like Audiosurf, games that react to the music playing, on the DS?
Nintendo has generally been about not bloating its systems in the past. Why would they release a new DS with all this crap while it's still going strong?
I own both a DS Lite & an iPod Touch (1st gen). I enjoy both of them, though I have been getting a lot more use out of my iPod Touch in the last month or so. Most DS games have music, so I really don't see myself listening to different music while playing a game on the DS. Likewise, unless the DS will include an address book, calendar, e-mail, scientific calculator and web browser on board, plus the ability to sync with my computer & download free apps wirelessly, Apple has nothing to worry about.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
adding all this extra stuff to a portable gaming console is just bloatware and evidence that the company doesn't have its priorities straight
We've discussed rumors of this on gbadev.org and pocketheaven.com. Consensus was that Nintendo might do this to make it less likely that people will buy adapters like SuperCard DS One, CycloDS Evolution, or M3 Real for video and then end up using them to pirate games.
I wouldn't count on this report being correct. Nintendo has had a pure cash cow with the Nintendo DS. Since it market does not appear to have slowed significantly or run into serious competition, why would they refresh the hardware? A few folks have suggested the iPhone as competition, but I don't see anyone purchasing iPhones as DS replacements. Instead, they appear to use their iPhone as a spectacular networked handset and the DS as a gaming platform. The market does not appear ready to confuse the two.
Perhaps the most damning evidence is that out of all these reports on a new DS, they all cite the same source: Nikkei Business Daily. No one has yet independently confirmed this. So take it with a very large grain of salt.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Hopefully that means WPA capability (finally...)
Most DS games have music, so I really don't see myself listening to different music while playing a game on the DS. Likewise, unless the DS will include an address book, calendar, e-mail, scientific calculator and web browser on board
You just described the feature set of DSOrganize 3.1129, a very popular homebrew application for the Nintendo DS.
Any piece of technology will advance until it has an MP3 player function.
And can send email, and run Linux.
[...] they all cite the same source: Nikkei Business Daily. No one has yet independently confirmed this. So take it with a very large grain of salt.
Or considering the source maybe even a grain of rice.
Since it market does not appear to have slowed significantly or run into serious competition, why would they refresh the hardware?
To reduce demand for R4, as I mentioned.
I think most of us saw this one coming, but the article is completely devoid of any information. First it's still just speculation that this is going to be the new announcement. For all any of us know it could be another new device to interact with the Wii. The only evidence the article even presents is that another news publication carried the rumor yesterday.
There's no mention of how they're going to add music and make it easy to put music on the device. There's no details on the camera either or even if the physical dimensions of the DS are going to be further reduced. Wouldn't it have been better to wait until Thursday when the product is actually announced and all of the details are released?
I don't mind a little speculation, but this had absolutely no substance to it at all. It's just a rumor repeated from another publication without anything of value added. Without the rest of the fluff about sales figures and release dates this article would have been one or two lines at most. What a complete waste of time.
taco, you sound like my mother.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Hopefully that means WPA capability (finally...)
Probably not to existing games. WPA would need driver support, and the Wi-Fi driver is part of the game, not the DS firmware.
But in my opinion, WEP + MAC filtering is good enough. It won't prevent everyone from breaking into your network, but it still establishes an attacker's intent to break into your network and diverts wardrivers to your neighbor's open network.
I'd like to see more productivity apps for the DS. My son cracked the case of his DS, and I tried fixing it with a new case. It worked, but I guess I didn't plug in the secondary video cable too well because it acts all wonky sometimes; so I got him a new one and kept the old one for myself.
But I don't use it at all (it's stable when you are... it'd go wonky in the car when we hit a bump or something). I don't have any electronic organizers or anything, so I'd really like to see some productivity apps for it. I mean, it's got wifi and everything built in, it seems you should be able to do email, address books, calendars...
I know there is a homebrew group of people who are working on such things, but it seems like another giant pain. I don't have time to tinker. It's odd that Nintendo didn't see fit to release something along those lines themselves.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
with a 'no comment' style reply, here:
http://kotaku.com/5056082/nintendo-on-that-new-ds-rumor
Baka Drew
From my knowledge, when you buy a game for your iPod, it's tied to that hardware unit, and you can't transfer it to a new iPod.
Yes you can. The iPod/iPhone apps are tied to your iTunes account and not the devices themselves. You can sync multiple devices with one account.
My wife and I each have an iPhone. Whatever apps I buy for my phone are also available on hers. Everything is a two-for-one deal!
FYI, Nintendo has officially responded to this rumor:
Hmm... playing close to their chest, aren't they?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
When a Japanese business rag states something as a fact, you can be pretty sure they have good sources on it. Japanese papers don't play fast and loose with the truth just to sell a few extra copies.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
You don't stay ahead of the game by standing still. If the DS wants to avoid competition springing up, it has to be a moving target.
There are some critical flaws in the DS that I'm surprised they've done nothing to fix. The most major is the lack of WPA support, forcing anyone who wants their DS to be network enabled to use WEP WAPs. (Say that five times...)
It's also not hard to see ways in which it could be improved while keeping within its mandate - the music feature seems more of a "me too" thing, but the camera sounds like something I can see Nintendo adding just to create another input device for DS developers to find new and original uses for. (If anyone has difficulty understanding what I mean here, then take the microphone on the DS. There's a subgame available for the DS where you inflate balloons by blowing into the microphone. Yeah. Now, think about that kind of lateral thinking applied to a camera.) Motion sensors would strike as obvious enhancements too.
I'm disappointed that Nintendo isn't doing more to enhance their current offerings. Releasing a more advanced Wii for a slightly higher price, while keeping the current one in production, would do much to manage demand for the unit while keeping sales and profits high.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The expected reply. Many companies have a policy to never support or deny rumors except with official product announcements so noone can fill in the gaps (e.g. if they were to deny all or most false rumors a refusal to comment will mean it's more likely the rumor is true).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I agree with you. As the DS isn't forced to be connected to the internet all the time like the Wii or XBox 360, there's little chance that a user would install a console firmware update that would brick a hacked firmware or disable Slot1/2 card. So they use the carrot instead of the stick - new shiny carrot vs your old machine that can play homebrew/backup roms but has poor wifi and no camera...
OK, technically the Wii isn't "forced" to be connected to the internet all the time... You always have the option of not connecting the thing to your router - and if you do that, games will still just work. To my knowledge Nintendo doesn't push out firmware updates, either - they send you mails, suggesting you upgrade firmware, but that's it...
Now, regarding the matter of DS updates bricking DSes - it has happened before.
Specifically, old versions of FlashMe (from before Mario Kart DS, the first DS game with internet connectivity) wrote some of its own code into regions of flash ROM which would later be used by Ninteno Wi-Fi connection to store router settings and so on. So once the user booted up a game with Nintendo Wi-Fi support and configured their internet connection, their DS would be bricked. (Fortunately, FlashMe included a contingency that allowed people to re-flash their DSes even after something like this...)
Of course, I don't think it's entirely fair to say that's Nintendo's fault. I mean, after all, nobody told Flashme they could use that area of ROM...
Bow-ties are cool.
Or considering the source maybe even a grain of rice.
Hooray for racism!
Hooray for being overly politically correct!
Honestly, why is changing a grain of salt to a food that's a staple for the area that the news is coming from considered racism?
That's not racist.
It's riceist.
I chink you don't understand how a PC thug works.
You joke, but actually you're onto something :
And an NES emulator
Once an SDK appears for whatever the platfrom, in addition to enabling MP3 support and running Linux (if not already supported, otherwise replace with *BSD), what are the two next thing that are compiled on absolutely whatever device ?
- A port of Doom/Quake/Duke/Unreal/whatever latest opensource is still within hardware perfs.
- A port of ZSnes/Gens/Mame/whatever emulator fits into the perfs of the machine.
(And only the perfs, even if the hardware control scheme lacks any decent input : Having only touch screens and accelerometers hasn't stopped the OpenMoko and the iPhone receiving ports of Doom. At least at some future point in time, the OpenMoko would probably get gamepad-over-bluetooth support like PalmOS device).
No single device has ever made an exception. Even RockBox has emulators.
What makes things worse is, whereas BlackBerrys have been a niche market and Palms are dying, iPhone is going to be a mass consumed accessory.
And that may piss off Nintendo, because every game ran on an emulator is one less <strike>pigeon</strike> consumer, who may have had a chance of rebuying once-again all the classics.
The old (suit-happy) Nintendo would probably have tried suing the emulators into disappearance (and may have had some limited success given Apple totalitarian control of app distribution). But since then they have changed and partly recognized potential market for emulation (see their Wii's Virtual Console).
Except the DS to follow these trends and some future version starting to feature emulators with downloadable-over-Wifi legal ROMs from their online store (or sync-able with the home Wii).
In that circumstances, PDAs running emulators are in direct concurrence with their products.
And as such, any sexy feature that they add to their DS to make it more looking like a PDA, is one feature less that will encourage people to get PDAs/SmartPhone, and instead encourages them to stay with simplier featurephone running Java (and unable to run a decent emulator, at least for some time).
The whole may simply a defence to make players less compelled to buy a device that will on the long term, turn out to be competitor.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This new version is definitely a method of staying ahead of the hackers. Nintendo knows they will never be able to stop people from running home brew and illegal ROMs. So the best thing they can do is bring new hardware to the market with new features and make the homebrew community start over. The DS is at the price point where people can pick one up on a whim, buy a R4 or another similar device, download some software and play for free. Nintendo doesn't make any royalties from pirated software...
I don't think we'll see a DS refresh breaking any Slot-1 flashcarts, unless they also want to break compatibility with existing DS games.
Imagine the new DS taking a checksum of the ARM7 and ARM9 binaries from the inserted Game Card. The firmware has a list of the SHA-1 values of the first 3,000 or so releases. All releases after that are digitally signed with RSA in much the same way as DS Download Play clients and DS Download Station demos. So when the new DS loads a card, it'll take the SHA-1 as if it were a DS Download Play game. If it checks out against the signature, good. If the SHA-1 is on the whitelist, good. Otherwise, put "An Option Card is inserted" at the top of the touch screen instead of booting the card. Flash cards will fail to verify in exactly this way.
The RSA key for the DS has been known for a while now
GBATEK documents that while DS Download Play clients are signed, DS Game Cards are not. They use a different algorithm based on Blowfish, and this is what flash cards emulate. Adding RSA to new releases and whitelisting legacy releases would block flash cards from booting
The secret key for the copy protection is known
The Blowfish key is known. But the other key isn't, which could allow for the system that I described in another post.