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Nintendo To Start Publishing Ebooks On the DS
Miracle Jones writes "Nintendo is going to start publishing ebooks for the DS in conjunction with HarperCollins. The first cartridge will go on sale December 26th in the UK, will cost around 30 dollars, and will feature 100 classic books — stuff like Charles Dickens and Jane Austen."
Dickens and Austen, eh? So what sort of DRM is Nintendo going to use to "protect" this "IP"?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
ds homebrew has always stated to support ebook but i have yet to get one readable. i hope this is well recieved by the public.
The first ebooks should be should be of old Nintendo Power magazines!
So I get to pay $30 for books I can legally download for free?
... Nintendo and literacy. What's next, Smith & Wesson diet supplements?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'd prefer a PDF reader for homebrew. ComicBookDS is quite a cool little application that will let you read CBR files, you'll need to convert them first but its essentially just scaling & rar'ing them in a particular way.
jaymz
"Eh, little Bobby has one of those darn new fangled nintenders? And there's books for it? I'll buy him that!"
Average population's vision deteriates due to reading smaller text on smaller electronic screens.
This sounds like the ultimate excuse for playing your DS during class / at home when you're supposed to be doing homework. Now there just needs to be an alt-tab equivalent so you can flip over to the ebook and pause playing tetris long enough to convince them that you're reading.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
I know I was just clamoring to get my my hands on the Jane Austin books when I was a kid. If only there was a way to get it digitally, and in a form where I could read it while making people think I was playing video games! Oh, that would have been too much to ask.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
The DS has a decent screen, but I think I (and most everyone else) would start getting a headache in about five minutes if they tried to read lots of text on it. After five weeks, I'd be lucky to see anything at all!
Granny Smith Wesson Oil Recipes
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to buy a most hated Christmas Present. Can you imagine a kid getting this, "Yay, a new DS game" "Boo, it's just books."
and it'll be like a DS RPG, but with better stories and fewer boss battles.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
It's already exhausting staring at that thing for hours, especially with Japanese RPGs which already feature a novel's worth of writing to begin with. I can only imagine how uncomfortable it will be trying to read a book with that thing.
In the very least, I think the DS needs a much higher resolution screen before they start considering anything like this.
Damn! Sure I can buy it on Ebay, but I speak American.
-- Boycott Shell
You have to wonder whether Nintendo's all one company or a fragmentary band communicating by carrier pigeon. The DSi is about to come out and NoE decide to publish a collection of public domain books on cartridge? Wouldn't it be more sensible to charge some nominal fee for an ebook reader program on the DSi store and then let people "beam" books from the intertrons? Come to think of it, the DSi has a browser built in which will merrily read the contents of Project Gutenberg.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I imagine that this product is not geared to twitchy eight year old kids, but a bid to capture older generations (35+). First they came out with their memory enhancement games that had broader appeal to non-gamers. This is just another step in that direction.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Smith & Wesson diet supplements?
I just thought of "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" as a good slogan for them.
Who would buy this when every one of those books is in the public domain. It's cheaper and better to use a homebrew app like Moonshell http://www.ds-xtra.com/MoonShell and download as many public domain works as you want from the Gutenberg project http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page.
The DS is a horrible, clunky interim device, but it is definitely closer to what I'd like to see than the Kindle or the Sony Ereader. I've penned a lengthy essay on the matter over at The Fiction Circus: The Dream You Hold: Four Metaphors for Books, Offered as Aid to the New Electronic Bookbinders You guys should read it and tell me what you think. What I am missing and what I've got right.
The article submitter (Miracle Jones) just posted a good article on this here.
Before they kept selling the same titles over and over again (buy the classic NES games for the SNES, and then again for the GB, and now again on the Virtual Console!) and now they're selling public domain works.
In all fairness, I guess reissuing old games is better than letting them fade away into obscurity when most people don't have the old systems to legally play old games anymore.
I just wish Nintendo would focus more on new products. My N64 and Gamecube both gathered dust from not enough quality releases, and my Wii is likely to do the same.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Is anyone else sick of proprietary ebook formats?
I have an N810 that I bought primarily for an ebook reader since it runs it runs Linux, the theory behind my purchase was someone out there had or would probably would create something that could read most formats, or I could find converters that could convert many things to some format it could read.
And then Amazon released the kindle with it's ultra-proprietary ultra-PITA format. There's mobi, Microsoft's format, and I'm sure Sony has something since they have a reader, and Sony is the biggest proponent of proprietary formats ever.
My personally preferred format is OEB which is really just html with an xml document specifying book information. That FB reader that my N810 uses renders beautifully and pre-populates author/title information for me.
Does anyone know of a converter for some of the DRMed proprietary formats that convert to OEB? I have Linux (Ubuntu) and windows available to run things on.
Question everything
I thought the DS had a lot of interactive books already available. Namely all of the Phoenix Wright series.
Yeah, what next, a Microsoft game console?
I would purchase virtually every book I read from Amazon if I could get it in a format my Nokia N810 can read, but they're determined to lock you into their Kindle, it's pay to play service, and it's proprietary AZW format.
Does anyone know how to get your purchased kindle books other than wireless delivery, and also, how to convert them (preferably to OEB)?
I haven't tried yet, but I'm not even sure they'll let me buy an ebook if I don't have a kindle I can tie to my Amazon account for them to send it to.
Question everything
Selling an RSA encrypted cart containing a collection of books in the public domain is hypocrisy at its best. I concur with some of the others in this thread who recommend loading ebooks onto flash cards; I actually bought a handful of DSTT cards from DealExtreme for under $7 each, shipped. I loaded 'em up with a couple of dozen homebrew titles - including the moonshell video player (with an assortment of PD cartoons and short films) and an ebook app. My friends and family will be getting one, as an example of how the DS is a great homebrew platform. Much more fun than a gift card or dvd.
The DS is awkward to hold, even more so when it's on its side. The screens hold only a small amount of text. Books are FREE to read at a library, and they don't require electricity!
The bigger issue is that [the DS Lite screens'] .24mm dot pitch is extremely coarse for a mobile device (.24 would be around that of a desktop monitor) - compared again to the iPhone at .16 or so, it doesn't give much room for font anti-aliasing.
But each pixel has blue, green, and red components side-by-side, so you can get closer to .08 if your reader software uses subpixel antialiasing.
Will they have "David Coperfield?"
That's "David Coperfield" with one P, by Edmund Wells.
The DSi is about to come out and NoE decide to publish a collection of public domain books on cartridge?
Nintendo DSi is the only major handheld video game system whose games are region-locked.
How many people were actively looking for touchscreens on things like netbooks before the DS?
Anybody who had used a PDA. But back then, they weren't called "netbooks" but "tablet PCs".
I love the idea, and anything that promotes literacy is a winner in my books. However Project Gutenburg will be where I get my FREE classics. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
$30 to let you read books on your teevee? There is some kind of weird irony there.
Nintendo is failing big time.
They keep making non-games, for a gaming device...
If you own a DS, you NEED to own a R4.
Why? Pocket devices just aren't very good as eBook readers. If you read with any speed at all, you have to turn the page every 3 seconds. It gets old.
Right now, I often read eBooks on my Motion Computing tablet, where the screen is a little bigger than that of most hardbound book pages. And when the price comes down to something reasonable, I'll probably get a Kindle or Sony. These have a screen the size of a paperback book page, which is probably the minimum practical size for a reader.
I'll save my DS for playing Advance Wars.
In which alternate reality was this?
As far as books and the Berne convention are concerned, I think the US was probably a rogue state until, what, ... 1986?
Until then, the US had a thing called the Manufacturing Clause, which (as far as I can recall) meant that the US refused to acknowledge copyrights on any books that weren't physically made in the US. Basically, it meant that if you wanted to sell a book in the US, you had to employ a US-based printer ... if you didn't employ one of them to produce copies of your book, the US printing community had a legal green light to print as many pirate copies of your book as they liked.
Basically, the US printing lobby lobbied the government to protect them from foreign imports, and they got their way (and copyright be damned).
There are two slightly shocking things about the Manufacturing Clause:
For a while, I think that some overseas publishers were getting around the Manufacturing Clause by sending their books to the US in unbound form, and paying a US printer just to put the covers on in the US, on the basis that this counted as "manufacturing". I think this was considered by some US printers as cheating.
Eric Baird
Let's be honest here; if they had enforceable 50-years copyright back then, Dickens would not have written so many fine books but instead sit back and collect royalties after a few good sellers.
Actually, while we're on the subject, does anyone know if there =IS= a PS2 equivalent? 'Cos I know someone who might be interested.
Eric Baird
"will feature 100 classic books"
You mean books that they won't have to pay licensing fees for?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
What do your metaphors say about you?
BOOKS AS WALLS: I am an insular introvert scared of communicating with the real world and enjoying real experiences and prefer to live my life second hand through someone else's vision.
BOOKS AS DOORS: I am a vapid self absorbed delusional schizophrenic who finds books a convenient excuse for my social ineptitude.
BOOKS AS FRIENDS: I am a pitiful wretch of humanity with not a single other living soul with which to share my lonely, dreary existence.
BOOKS AS GENITALS: I am in need of severe therapy, involving a pretty girl, a Labrador retriever, a large stack of books and some matches.
CONCLUSION: Even when the last book on earth has perished to the new age of electronic publication you will still be a sad, pathetic excuse for a human being.
That was a little harsh, but you insulted the thing I use to hide behind walls, to open new doors, to make friends and to explore my sexual fantasies. Strip away your romantic aesthetic and you're left with an outdated medium of communication, no more, no less. Nothing you said in all of that terrible prose would help anyone, anywhere design a better e-book reader.
A good article? Let me guess, you'll be here all week, try the shrimp?
I already have an e-reader on my DS. And I don't have to pay $30 to read public-domain books.
Personally, I use Mobipocket on my Blackberry to read eBooks all the time. The reader is free, and it works great. http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/default.asp?Language=EN
-Xoltri
Well, Nintendo has pushed the Brain Age games and "keeping your brain young", so this seems like a logical step for them. Targeting only Britan with it's initial launch (which doesn't currently have Kindle available locally) seems like an interesting way to gauge the market in areas that don't have a worldwide-known competitor.
I second the vote for DSLibris. Getting books into xhtml format is a pain in the ass, but once you do the reader is quite nice. The DS could use a bit higher resolution for reading, but it's not too bad IMO.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
You missed his point, which is that being a gamer in no way precludes reading Dickens (which is what you unjustly implied).
Sorry if you thought I implied it. I thought I was perfectly clear. Statistically speaking, why in the world would you look towards gamers for an audience for classic literature? They are more of a Fantasy/Sci-fi crowd, if they even bother reading more than 1 book at month.
eBooks worked great for PalmOS because when you combine the set of nerdy people with extra money of a PDA with the set of people who read books, it still ended up with a large set.
If we combine the set of people who read classics with the set of people who are interested in buying more things for a Nintendo DS. And I am skeptical that the results are at all spectacular.
Just because you had to read Dickens one semester in school years ago and you also play games, doesn't mean I'm going to assume that you would pay a few bucks for a collection of classic literature to read on your NDS. In fact I feel confident that I can safely assume that almost nobody would do this beyond the shear novelty of buying a non-game DS cartridge/card. Will any of us who buy this really use it a year from now.
Most importantly, will any of us ready even 5 of the books in the 100 it offers in the next 5 years, even if you don't read it on the DS? And while I enjoyed reading "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" on my Kindle, I can't really claim that I'm a gamer anymore. (unless maintaining my NES counts as gaming and not merely a weird hobby)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Why is this tagged ukonly? The DS isn't region-locked.
Don't put advice in your sig.
This is great for reading children's books which is the bulk of its users, but I doubt anyone wants to read War & Peace on it. ;-)
Give me a Mac tablet/netbook please!
Oh, hey, 100 free Project Gutenberg titles for the low, low price of merely $30. That's...great.
They've been publishing collections of Japanese classics for a long time. The only new thing here is that they're targeting the same concept at an English speaking market, with English language classics.
not only that, its amazingly cheap. Flashcarts are under $10.00, SDHC chip under $10.00, roms are downloadable in huge torrents.
music lover since 1969
I heard books can be brain-rotting devices as well. So does that mean you are a in a group of sheeple who read stupid books and consider themselves superior to those who enjoy television?