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Nintendo To Take On Apple With DSi App Store
Dave Allen writes "Despite Nintendo publicly claiming no direct competition with the iPhone or iPod Touch with its new DSi console, reports have been leaked about the Big N actively encouraging developers to begin work on small form gaming and non-gaming applications for the DSi's download service.
This is the first step toward Nintendo putting together a direct App Store rival, and could be the marketing hook it's been desperately searching for to convince gamers to upgrade their DS." It seems only fair that since the iPhone is now a gaming platform, the DS is becoming a PDA. And, if the only difference between them is a 3G wireless connection, the rivalry can only get more fierce.
How about Dual Screens, Dual Cameras, expandable memory, clamshell design. Not to mention the thing plays DS GAMES!
Donnie, you're out of your element!
The DS has a totally different resolution, control structure, a minimal API set, and the big thing: no WWAN connectivity. It's just not even the same thing. It is much better at playing games, though.
If Nintendo doesn't intend to compete directly with Apple then why jump on the bandwagon with the "i" addition? I know it's trendy on everything from the iRobot to the i-Dog but in my opinion they show their hand with the name.
How does providing a download service for DSi "directly compete" with Apple's Appstore (to paraphrase the summary)? If you own an iPhone, you won't be able to access the DS store, and if you own a DSi you won't be able to access the iPhone Appstore, so how is that competition?
People won't be choosing between iPhone or DSi. They are completely different devices.
Dave Allen is either out of touch or trying to add some sensationalism to his writing when he says that Nintendo is "desperately" searching for anything.
Also, I'd prefer if the title of this article didn't try to imply that this was more than business as usual. "Nintendo Continues to Try to Sell Stuff" would have been more honest, but I guess less newsworthy.
Not in the slightest. Nintendo has been operating their Wii online store since before the iPhone App Store was a gleam in Jobs' eye. Their DSiWare track appears to be something they've been working on for some time. The iPhone App store and the DSiWare store are coincidental competitors, not reactive competitors. i.e. Nintendo no more reacted to the iPhone than Apple reacted to WiiWare.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So, will there be SDKs for download?
Are there already SDKs for download, and I just didn't know about them?
Education is the silver bullet.
How can you be a rival when you don't even play on the same field?
It's ludicrous to think that Nintendo and Apple are rivals for downloadable apps.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I mean, if you need more than 16MB of RAM and a 133MHz ARM9E to emulate a machine of the same processor family (right down to Thumb instructions) that's got less than 512kB of RAM and is a quarter the speed...
For one thing, the GBA stored its games in a word-addressable ROM up to 32 MB. If a game is bigger than 15 MB, it won't fit entirely in RAM along with the emulator, and it'll need to be rewritten to load sections from the flash. For another, an emulator on the DSi would have to emulate the GBA's video and sound chips in addition to the CPU, or at least somehow virtualize the video over the DS's existing 2D chipset.
Does it run linux?
Nintendo's online game store is probably going to be a precursor to a full-blown AAA-title download store for them. They're not interested in making the DS into a PDA, they're interested in cutting out Walmart as a middle-man.
(You don't have to look very far to see how digital distribution is changing the gaming market. Eg. XBox Live Arcade, Steam, D2D, etc. Nintendo wants a piece of the sweet sweet pie that Valve cooked with Steam.)
... unless you believe all the hyperbole that comes out of Apple's marketing department.
The iPhone is a gaming platform as much as my Tamagotchi is a gaming platform (when compared to a DS). We're talking casual, short games vs. full blown DS games, there's no comparison here.
Not at all. The Nintendo DS has sold over a hundred million units; that's 2-3 times more than Apple has sold iPhones. The moment Nintendo begins competing against Apple in the 'portable gadget' field, they will immediately become one of Apples biggest competitors.
Plus, Nintendo has a similar emphasis on quality and user experience as Apple, and much moreso than most of Apple's other competitors. However, I think Nintendo isn't interested in direct competition, but is probably trying to exploit an untapped market (like they did with the Wii).
Yet another additional surplus extra "me too" in the market.
I think you mean "mii too!"
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Also the DSi is not a phone. Thats a pretty big difference too. Maybe some could claim its competition against the Ipod Touch but really, one is made primarily for listening to music and the other for primarily playing games.
~Petaris "The world is open. Are you?"
while you raise a good point, it isn't particularly hard to re-invent paging. ;)
When you reinvent paging, you reinvent thrashing. The PocketNES emulator for Game Boy Advance had a version that ran on the GBA Movie Player, and before heavy optimizations were done to free up some more space for the paging system, Kirby's Adventure thrashed the crap out of the emulator's 192 KiB page buffer.
Not at all. The Nintendo DS has sold over a hundred million units; that's 2-3 times more than Apple has sold iPhones.
And the DS has been out 2-3 times as long. It's not just the iPhone, but also the iPod touch, as well as any future iPhone OS devices that the DS will compete with.
The way I see it, another App store that is on another platform is not really a direct rival to Apple's iTunes App store for iPhone/iPod touch. They're not REALLY stealing any sales from Apple's store, as the Apple users will still continue to have to use the iTunes app store to buy stuff for their iPhones/iPod touch.
Now, if someone was to open an app store that was able to sync and install onto the iPhone, THAT would be a rival. Yes, at the moment that would require Apple certifying the application to be able to sync to the iPhone, and configuring the iPhone to allow such a store to sync onto it, which we all know would probably be as likely to happen as seeing Halley's comet next month near Earth.
Maybe, in the future, all these stores will coalesce into one big store, or use an open framework so that each store can sync onto any device... but for now, they are not really competition of each other so long as each store retains sole rights over its respective device.
I work with (not for) Nintendo Marketing and can say that they take games on cellphones and mp3 players very seriously.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
They've seen how easy it is to make money on CSI knock offs. Now we know why Grissom left the CSI series, it's only a matter of time before we're watching Law and Order:The Mushroom Kingdom.
DESPITE claims? That implies that it goes against their complains of not being "direct competition." The DSi is still not going to be a phone or an mp3 player, which are what the iPhone and iPod are, respectively. So it's still true, this isn't direct competition. Oh no, a small hand-held PDA-like device that plays games and can connect to the internet. Apple is doomed. Nintendo is lying by claiming they aren't directly competing with Apple...
Nintendo have been trumpeting the DSi Store as a WiiWare equivalent for the DS for ages, I don't see why someone would "leak" the fact that they're - gasp - getting people to develop games for it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
There are some specific differences between the GBA's 2D video and that of the DS that would get in the way of bug-for-bug compatibility. The extended rotation modes (3, 4, 5) act significantly different on the GBA and DS. The different row pitch alone screws things up.. The sprite priority . You'd need to use some sort of window system to hide an 8px wide border at the sides and a 16px wide border at the top and bottom, and you'd need to change all the scrolling register writes and all the mode 7 HDMA writes to offset the position by (8, 16). Trust me; this has already been hashed out on the board at Pocket Heaven.
And, if the only difference between them is a 3G wireless connection, the rivalry can only get more fierce.
Isn't one of them not a phone? That sounds like a big difference to me.
Nintendo isn't competing with Apple on this, but to keep up with Sony's Playstation Store. Apple isn't the first to have an online store to download apps directly to their device, but they are the first to make it easily available for developers to put up their work.
Now my daughters will have a new way to put their Dad in the poor house. Thank you Nintendo for bringing the joy of gaming to children everywhere and a new line item on millions of families budgets!
Seriously - this is great news, as the DS has always been one of the coolest little gadgets and it's potential is incredible beyond gaming.
Maybe they just think the App Store is a good idea.
Incidentally, Debian had this AGES ago.
It is positively loaded with shovelware. And before I get marked troll, look at my name.
This is the first step toward Nintendo putting together a direct App Store rival
This is the first step toward Nintendo nickel-and-diming DSi owners with more money than sense, selling them inferior clones of the homebrew software people have been running on the DS for years.
we all know android is going to win anyways in 3 years because it's "open" ... look at the linux desktop if you don't believe me. oh wait, nevermind...
Also the DSi is not a phone.
Only because of the lockout chip. The DS Lite had a homebrew phone app.
What did you want them to call it? The DS Lite Plus?
What about the "DS Liter"?
Though I doubt that would sell in America... they'd have to call it the "DS Two-and-a-bit Pints" there instead.
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This is a minor gripe of mine, media doesn't really understand technology so they get some rough approximation of how things work and run with it
The DS plays games, the iPhone can play games, they are both immensely popular and have touch screens, therefore they must be competitive products.
If you look, you'll find similarly misinformed articles that act as though the iPhone was the first device to have a touch screen, or the first to have an application portal, or the first to play games. Misunderstandings like this are all over the internet and are a clear example of news outlets attempting to get some manner of readership by simply talking about something popular. It doesn't do justice to the devices in question, and it helps to perpetuate the general level of misinformation that most people have about devices that are rapidly becoming an important part of their lives.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
Add dual Sim card too.
Just recently I changed jobs and was provided a work phone. Carrying two phones around is a pain in the backside, and I'd love for a good quality dual-sim smartphone, that doesn't look like a cheap piece of junk.
Most of those DS's are still out there. The primary mode of failure for the thing seems to be theft.
You are right, but Apple don't just sell iPhones, they also sell iPod touches, which run applications. They don't release the number of these that have been sold.
So it's Apple Computers that invented the online store? Wow, Jobs is really a visionary!
Plus, Nintendo has a similar emphasis on quality and user experience as Apple
Except in Nintendos case you get awesome quality and service for your money.
I guess Nintendo could actually do a phone, thought not likely. Eventually the market will still (?) have them rated at a higher worth than both Sony and Panasonic/Matsushita, and both of them makes phones. And I guess Nintendo is rather good at optimizing their products on cost.
The DS has no chance in compete in "application market and possibilities" as is, it was not designed for this in the first place, a new device may had been different.
I must admit I don't know much about the actual extra hardware on the DSi though, it had some builtin memory for storing apps?
Yes, have you used the Wii store? It's a steaming pile of shit compared to iTunes.
Nintendo knows how to make fun gameplay, not how to market software or develop interfaces.
Ever play a Wii game?
"Hello!" Press A!
"I'm a cute star creature!!" Press A!
"I can give you a powerup!" Press A!
"Feed me star bits!" Press A!
"Do you want this or that type?" Select A or B on screen.
"Here you go!!!!!!" (animated delay) Press A!
The big 3.0: How iPhone will shift peripheral devices
I'm looking into an OpenPandora, but if the DSi had some of the same basic functionality - wireless internet, calender/organizer, notepad, etc. - it'd be worth the money for me (and probably cheaper as well).
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