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: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.

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.

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.

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

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.