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

Finally !

[assemblerex]

I have asked nintendo in their surveys for such an improvement. Nice to see they listen.

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: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.

Re:Finally !

[CelticWhisper]

There's an easy cure to that: Become a Mac user. You get so used to being shafted by major improvements mere months (or weeks, days...) after you buy your shiny new system that eventually you're numb to it. Stupid MDD G4s...*grumble*...

Re:Finally !

[Yvan256]

Nothing beats the feeling of finally buying a Mac mini G4 and seeing Apple switch to intel processors a week later.

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?

[Grey Ninja]

I think the sound capabilities leaves a lot to wish for.

The DSi has a much improved DAC, allows 16 simultaneous mono voices in hardware (I think, it could be 8 mono)

3D capability leaves a lot to wish for.

True, but it was done this way due to battery reasons. When someone writes a software renderer for DSi, we'll likely see a pretty big jump in graphics (for DSi only)

The DS lite (which plenty of us have bought ..) don't do diagonal upper-right movements very well.

What?

Personally I would from the beginning had preferred one screen with the total resolution of the current two there the developers themselves could had decided how they wanted to use it. And of course better 3D capabilities.

Then you would have a PSP. The second screen is an artifact of the design of the system. I think Nintendo really wanted a clamshell, because it makes the system far more portable. You don't need a case, and can slip one into your pocket without ruining the screen. I own a DS, DSi, and PSP. The PSP remains at home, while the DSi comes with me wherever I go. Reason being that it doesn't require a case, and is a good deal smaller.

Also in the case of the DSi I guess one could argue that at least the loss of the GBA slot is something "wrong" with it. That and the very high price, the DS has been around for like 5 years but still kinda cost as much since each new version starts off at a slightly higher price the the current one.

DSi is Nintendo's new handheld. It has 4x the power of the DS, and is a significantly better system in every way. It's a fair price to pay for the new system. The problem is the lack of DSi exclusive games, because Nintendo is currently selling it as a new DS. This is really not the case. Next year, we will likely see the rise of the DSi, after there's an established market. I think Nintendo is just rolling it out slowly because they don't need to rush, and they don't want people to feel cheated.

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.

Re:For a Change?

[A12m0v]

True, PSP brings nothing new in terms of gameplay or fun, and this is reflected on its sparse library and low sales.

Don't Pull a Sega.

[bertoelcon]

Dear Nintendo,

I would really like if you didn't do this, but as long as its still compatible you should be ok. You were there when Sega pulled the constant hardware change and killed their own hardware sector. I kinda like you Nintendo so keep it compatible and the bitching will be a minimum.

Your Fan,

bertoelcon

Absolutely.

[Anonymous Coward]

All progress should stop, because a blogger said so.

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.

I agree with the no innovation part.

[SetupWeasel]

I mean try something new. Two screens? Touchscreen? My Microvision had that back in '83 after I took a hit of acid. Get with the times, Nintendo!

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.

Re:For a Change?

[Toonol]

This comment made me laugh, no insult intended, because I really can't tell if you are being straightforward or being terribly sarcastic.

I've seen so many console wars in various forums that I just can't tell anymore.

Re:For a Change?

[aliquis]

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

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

DS Improvements a good thing

[LostMyBeaver]

Last night I spent the better half of the evening replacing the busted shell of my daughter's Nintendo DS Lite which took a hard fall and the hinges busted leaving the screen dangling by the wires. For the $12 for a new shell, it is well worth it to repair the unit.

The DS is an excellent piece of equipment. It's small, but not too small. It's light, but heavy enough to be comfortable. It has great battery life and even my original Nintendo DS (pre-lite) still functions for hours on a single charge.

If I were to make any improvements to the DS, I would make the charger USB based and make it so that save games and such could be backed up similar to the iPhone.

There is a fantastic software library for the DS with hundreds if not thousands of titles. The unit still plays Gameboy Advance games and was even quite entertaining to play guitar hero on.

In fact, game play on the DS is wonderful. I've never stopped enjoying playing on the unit. From Mario to Final Fantasy it's an awesome unit. What I'm most surprised about is that no one has developed a gyro/motion sensor that would fit into the advance cartridge slot to make games more Wii like.

The only thing that a "Revolutionary New Design" would bring would be the need to buy higher resolution versions of the same titles. Fact is, for the screen size, the games are more than good enough already. Using classic address hacking methods (similar to the original 8086 LIM/EMS extensions) it's possible to make games bigger and bigger.

I haven't felt an urge to buy a DSi since it doesn't appear to offer anything over what I already have. It might be different if the game store were more like Apple's so that I could install the same game on both of my kids' devices, but for now, switching game cards between devices is good enough.

The Playstation Portable is a much more advanced device and still to this day, I've yet to see any games for it that make me say "Wow I need that". I'm sure that Nintendo could probably build a market for new games on a new device, but really, what's the point? Nintendo makes far more money off of licensing than off of the console. The more games that get sold, the more they make. The console can actually be sold at a loss (like they would actually need to hehe) and they'd still get rich.

I hope that if they ever do come out with a successor to the DS, they make it so that DS games play without any problems. I think if it came down to choosing a new Nintendo device which couldn't play the old games, I'd just get the kids iPod Touches instead.

Now all we need is Pokemon or Bakugan for iPhone.

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:Good Idea

[Bai jie]

You're in luck /.ers! A girl out there is satisfied by only 3.25 inches!

Re:Sony's historical 2D bans

[quantumplacet]

you say that like it's a fact (much like the douchebag who wrote the blog you link to) but neither one of you has a shred of evidence, and the list of 2D games for PS2 would seem to directly contradict this ridiculous statement (see http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sony/ps2/2007/10/best-2d-ps2-games-playstation-2.html for a list).

Re:Good Idea

[that IT girl]

Read carefully.. I didn't say either was satisfactory, I just asked if 4 was much better than 3.25 ;)

And funnily enough, for once I didn't even think of the pervy connotations of that comment when I made it!