Can Nintendo Really Be Planning Another DS Variant?

itwbennett writes "'There was a lot of talk yesterday about an article in the Japanese publication Nikkei which claimed that Nintendo was readying a new iteration of its DS line of handheld gaming systems,' writes blogger Peter Smith. 'The report claims the new unit will have 4" screens (the current unit has 3.25" screens) and is designed for older gamers who have trouble seeing the small screens of the current DSi. This new model is otherwise identical to the existing DSi and will ship by end of year in Japan.' As an 'older gamer' himself, Smith calls on Nintendo to stop this annual upgrade madness and do something truly innovative for a change, and he calls on gamers to put some pressure on Nintendo and not buy the new DS."

Comments

Is there any competition?

[SlothDead]

As long as there is no competing hand held on the horizon, Nintendo has no reason to compete with itself by creating a completely new hand held. Also keep in mind that Nintendo is one (the only?) vendor that actually makes money with their hardware, while others sell their's at a loss to make money with games. As long as people keep buying the new NDS deluxe pro 9000 GT Nintendo will keep producing them. Which makes perfect sense, so why bother?

Re:Is there any competition?

[aliquis]

... oh, and the freaking "friend codes" system should had never been implemented. What fun is Internet enabled games if you have no-one to play with?

And since it has support for a microphone higher specs helping it handle the additional processing for VoIP while playing would had been nice to.

Re:Is there any competition?

[LKM]

3D capability leaves a lot to wish for.

I actually feel ambivalent about this. While it is true that the DS is essentially incapable of doing many genres of 3D games, I personally am not unhappy about this. As a result of this hardware limitation, the DS has become the main console for people who like 2D sprite-based games. I love those games; there are few of them on "larger" consoles, but on the DS, new 2D games like Mario & Luigi, Advance Wars, New Super Mario or Professor Layton are even more common than 3D games.

For a Change?

[ArcadeNut]

Nintendo has been the only one who HAS innovated. Sony sure hasn't!

Re:For a Change?

[aliquis]

Relax it's slashvertisment for some guys blog and his ads.

Re:For a Change?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

As a NeoGeo Pocket Color owner, I can say this.

You're full of fucking shit on sales.

The PSP is still on *sale*. Do you realize how revolutionary *that* is? The PSP outlived any other portable machine that competed against the Big N, and continues to sell. Except *maybe* the Game Gear, but I predict the psp is going to outlive that.

Nothing wrong with this

[Toonol]

If the description is right, it's simply a variant with a larger screen. Not much more different than a new color. It's not an 'upgrade', and if you feel obligated to buy this to keep current, you are the one with the problem, not Nintendo.

Re:Finally !

[Artraze]

Indeed. This is actually a very good idea, especially because it costs Nintendo very little but could (further) open up a largely untapped market segment.

I'm honestly rather surprised the blogger is upset by this; it's really just a different option, rather than "upgrade". It's like he's saying that a publisher should be out finding new books instead of making a large print version of an existing best seller.

Re:What about the resolution?

[aliquis]

Of course it is since it's just a new revision and not a new console. I doubt anyone would complain about having bigger screens rather than smaller even if the resolution is the same.

Good enough reason to upgrade? Most likely not.

Still an improved console for those who haven't bought one already? Yes.

Err, why?

[NoNeeeed]

"Smith calls on Nintendo to stop this annual upgrade madness"

Why? It's not as if Nintendo are making it incompatible, they are just providing a better product that plays the same games. It's like shouting at Apple to stop with the "annual upgrade madness and do something truly innovative" because they release a new MacBook every year.

It's not as if someone is making you upgrade (or did I miss something). In the case of the DS variants, they have (as with the Gameboy) been largely compatible between minor version changes.

And this cretin seems to be under the impression that designers just sit down and say "right, this morning we need something truly innovative" and it just happens.

Truly innovative ideas come along once in a decade, and both the DS and the Wii are examples of that (whether you personally like them or not).

Both the DS and Wii are also fantastically popular still, why should Nintendo muck around too much with the winning formula? If they did he would probably be complaining because he couldn't play his existing DS games in the new "innovative" system

Re:Err, why?

[rsmith-mac]

It's a fairly complex issue among Nintendo fans, but I'll try to break it down.

When it was launched, the DS was an experimental console, Nintendo's so-called "3rd leg". Nintendo had no significant faith in it, but threw it out there anyhow as an experiment while working on a proper Game Boy.

One consequence of this is that the components of the DS weren't necessarily picked as they would have been for a handheld designed to match the long life of a Game Boy. Nintendo made the DS underpowered, with a 66MHz ARM9, 4MB of RAM, and a 3D rasterizer that was hard-capped at 2048 polygons per frame with only nearest-neighbor texture filtering. Granted this sounded more impressive in 2004 than it does now, but they could have (and would have) used more powerful components if they expected the console to last.

As it stands, the hardware isn't as powerful as a Nintendo 64 or a PS1, and most attempts at full-3D games are downright pitiful because of this limit (the good ones, like Mario Kart, use a lot of sprites to hide this, but that strategy only works for certain kinds of games). So you're left largely with 2D games. And I like 2D games, but a certain degree of monotony sets in after a while as no one is pushing any boundries, not to mention the sheer amount of shovelware the platform generates.

Compounding this issue is the fact that Nintendo did finally do something about the hardware this year with the DSi, ramping up the clock speed of the ARM9 to 133MHz, and quadrupling the RAM to 16MB. Performance-wise, this is a token change, especially since the 3D rasierizer is still capped at 2048 polygons per frame. The additions were mainly to give the console enough extra umph that it can play with its camera.

But at the same time, it creates a clear difference in hardware classes, one Nintendo is going to exploit. There will be (and in fact may already be released) DSi-only games, which pisses off the DS Lite owners to no end, because they are now faced with being unable to play all new games for the thinnest of reasons. These people aren't going to buy the DSi, both because unlike the DS Fat to DS Lite transition the new console isn't clearly better for their needs (the Lite's screens were much better, and it was actually pocketable), and because they resent the upgrade treadmill.

Meanwhile in Sony-land, manufacturing technology has finally caught up with the ridiculously overbuilt PSP, which was an absolute brick when launched. The Go has some pricing/design issues, but fundamentally it finally gets Sony's near-PS2 hardware down to a size and battery life on-par with the DS. So DS owners are looking across the field at a handheld that's nearly a next-gen part, and they want that - they want some solid 3D games in their handheld gaming diet. Of course the grass isn't really greener on the other side since North American PSP game development has slowed to a crawl (and so few of the games are gems in the first place), but the hardware potential is clearly there.

This brings us to TFA. A new DS variant signals that Nintendo is remaining committed to the DS for at least another year, as they don't want to commission a new design and have it languish on the shelves. So this means that any hope of a "DS2" just got pushed back to at least 2011, which is pushing the frustration level over the top. The enthusiasts see what the PSP, the iPhone, etc are doing, and they want a DS with proper 3D capabilities, while Nintendo is signaling that they don't intend to deliver it any time soon. They don't want to abandon the platform, so they do the only thing they can do given their situation: they complain. And thus you have TFA.

On a side note, some of the complaining in this case is a product of just how silly this change is. The DS screen is only 256x192 pixels, which even at the original 3" size was pretty coarse (dot pitch: 0.24mm, and your head maybe a foot away). At 4" diagonal, this only gets worse. You end up with a screen with a dot pitch of 0.3175mm, and with your head at the same distan

Re:Err, why?

[ChaosDiscord]

Oh noes! My pixels are too big! My graphics aren't 3d enough!

I'm sure Nintendo is weeping over your suffering. Or perhaps they're weeping because they got a papercut while diving into their enormous pile of money.

A big chunk of the DS audience is outside of the 18-35 male demographic. It's the 40+ year old women and others. People whose eyes are starting to strain a bit looking at that little screen. People who don't follow the cutting edge of game technology. These are the people who complain that their new computer's text is "too small" and would rather run the computer in 800x600 instead of just using the "Large Fonts" option. (Understandably, since so much software fails when you enlarge the font size. (PS to Apple's Windows iTunes team: kiss my ass.)) These people also aren't clamoring for better 3d. When they're not using their DS, they're playing Snood, Bejeweled, and the Flash game of the week. The DS is delivering a stream of entertaining distractions for them. You're like the people looking down their nose at Flash games; while you're enjoying the high ground, millions of people are busy enjoying themselves.

The DS has been a phenomenally well managed product. It continues to move systems and games, blowing the PSP out of the water. Some people are frustrated because as "real" gamers they feel all gaming systems should target them. Sorry, if you're a "real" gamer, you're not really the target market. (What's a "real" gamer? Owning an Xbox360 or PS3 is a good clue. Thinking that "real" or "hardcore" applies to you but not other people is solid evidence. Having this discussion at all pretty much cinches it) I'm okay with not being "for" me; I enjoy my DS as something different from my more involved and expensive console and PC gaming.

do something innovative?

[rastoboy29]

What the fuck, they just came out with the Wii--a console significantly underpowered compared to their competitors, and proceeded to kick their asses in a number of interesting ways.

I don't think it's Nintendo who needs to prove their capacity for innovation, buddy.

Re:Nintendo is dead. They just dont know it yet.

[MadKeithV]

Nintendo really is dead as company. They have so little to offer. The Wii is a disaster hardware and software wise.

I'd love to have a few disasters like that....

Innovation.

[geekmux]

TFA: "As an 'older gamer' himself, Smith calls on Nintendo to stop this annual upgrade madness and do something truly innovative for a change"

Smith, if you can't "see" that this is in fact offering something to appease an entirely new group of older gamers as you claim to be, then it is very well likely you are in fact NOT one of them.

I don't see the difference between a pair of hearing aides that cost $2000 vs. $8000, but chances are those in need do.

Re:Finally !

[macshit]

If Nintendo decides that it wants to improve upon its current device in a manner that will not change Peter Smith's current DSi in any way that isn't psychological, I have a hard time seeing a problem.

I've noticed that many gamers seem to feel "cheated" if they buy something and the manufacturer subsequently releases an improved product -- even if it's only slightly improved, and even if it's a fair bit later. I think it's silly, but as far as I can tell, they feel that the manufacturer "owes" it to them to preserve their pride in owning the latest and greatest. Or something.

Slashdot should have omitted the silly moaning by the blogger though, and just posted the interesting info.

Nothing wrong with 'Annual Upgrade madness'

[Aphrika]

Other companies are releasing yearly iterations of hardware with bigger screens.

Are people going to realistically complain about Sony releasing a 50" LCD TV because they already produce a 40" one? No.

Friend codes keep out the pedos

[tepples]

oh, and the freaking "friend codes" system should had never been implemented. What fun is Internet enabled games if you have no-one to play with?

Without friend codes, what fun is Internet enabled games if your kids have sexual predators to play with?

Sony's historical 2D bans

[tepples]

No-one force people to use higher res or 3D capabilities just because it's there.

At various points during the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 eras, Sony Computer Entertainment America all but banned games with 2-dimensional sprite graphics.