The ending was tricky, but fairly plausible (at least up to the standard of the basic storyline's plausibility:D). The warp tunnel's main trick was in the order it transferred things - First In, Last Out. Witness the monkey (that was the first to enter the portal) being the last to leave it. Or the space station being the first to leave. Just think about it.
EA never dropped their new games to $20... they lowered the price, but not by that much. And Sega does have one advantage still - their games are better, and the "cheap enough to take a risk" price made sure a lot more gamers are aware of that now. That was the real goal, and sales indicate it probably worked. Won't know for sure until next year, of course...
Pretty sure the PSP batteries are completely replaceable. So really just PSP Battery version 2.0 is all you need. Very smart on Sony's part. Early adopters will buy it anyway, and a complaint of "it doesn't have enough battery life" is much easier to dissuade through a proposed upgrade then "its games suck".
And I still find it a little hard to believe, but supposedly the N-Gage is doing great business outside of the US. It is apparently very popular especially in Asian countries where it is 'free' (through long-term contracts). Just goes to show there are lots of ways for a portable game system to succeed outside the traditional Gameboy mode.
DS: A mixture. Feel the Magic isn't for kids, and I don't think Urbz is either. PSP: Zero, in either category. Because it ain't out yet.
Feel the Magic is really for all ages (though it is rated Teen). Nothing adult about it. Like nearly all EA games, Urbz (especially the GBA version and its DS port) is definitely aimed at kids.
You are being pretty disengenous to say we can't see who PSP games are directed at "because it ain't out yet". Various big games for it are widely known and have been for some time: Metal Gear, Dynasty Warriors, Final Fantasy, Tenchu, Twisted Metal, Wipeout... It looks to be aiming at the exact same market the original PS1 did: older teens and men in their 20s. No surprise there - it would be pretty ridiculous to suggest that Sony would instead be suddenly going for the less-demanding younger audience, who also happen to buy less games.
(And though I am finding it impossible to find online, surely you follow videogame news enough to remember that Nintendo announced just what age-range the DS was aimed at. I believe it was around 12-15...)
No, the DS is $150, and I think the GBA SP is cheaper by now as well. Where are you getting your information?
Probably Canada, since those are the Canadian prices. You'll note the price ratios are basically the same as they are in the US, making the parent poster's argument just as sound (GBA SP half the price of a DS) even with American prices. Calm down...
P.S. Tekken? Is it the 90's again and someone forgot to tell me?
I am not a fan of the series myself, but you would have to be pretty ignorant about videogaming trends to think Tekken is no longer a big deal to millions of people. Even though Tekken 4 was widely considered a failure, it did very good arcade and console business. Tekken 5 was hugely anticipated before release and is now doing awesome business in arcades around the world. Early word is that the game is quite good, too, avoiding most of the flaws that plagued Tekken 4. The PS2 version coming next year could possibly get up to Tekken3 sales numbers.
But the problem remains that the game needs to be fun with the default setup (a stock PS3), or it won't even sell in the first place. If the AI isn't good enough without extra CPUs, it won't be a good game. And if the AI is good enough, you don't really more CPUs to improve it to make the game more fun. It's already responsive enough/challenging/fun. Unless Sony somehow magically makes programming this capability almost seemless, developers are just going to focus on making the AI good enough for the default console, exactly like they do now.
There is no point to even trying to sell anyone on this until there's a bunch of Cell processors out there, so this is all wild speculation until then. I agree. I think it is still valid to debate the possible merits until then, but it is important to remember that we can't really separate marketing from reality yet. It's going to be an interesting upcoming E3, as I assume Sony will start showing off the real PS3 tech at least a little (to counteract the Xbox2 announcement, if nothing else).
Not that the DS has it made. If anything, the DS has too little graphics, and the PSP has too much. But somewhere in the middle is probably a happy medium that is powerful enough to show you what is going on, but simple enough not to suck batteries.
I agree, but I think Sony has a good gameplan here. The (apparent) battery-life problem can eventually be solved through better battery technology - the DS is stuck with underpowered graphics forever. (Software tricks will help a little here - but they can also help battery life problems.) Assuming you are in the running for the long haul, and Sony definitely is, going for 'too powerful' is probably the best approach to take.
And I think you do gloss over one important fact about 3D graphics and gameplay - more powerful hardware can make visuals clearer (either through texture filtering that the DS lacks, bump-mapping or lighting to give objects/environment more 'visual feedback', more complex geometry, more realism as opposed to visual metaphor, or even just a higher framerate). Clearer visuals can easily and directly lead to better 3D gameplay.
(Hint, hint Sony) Neither portable maker is exactly innocent of overloading their new portables with extra nongaming features this time out. Pictochat is just as useless as storing MP3s.
Games like Sonic for Gamegear actually did sell like hot cakes. Though it didn't reach huge Gameboy sale levels, the failure of the Gamegear has been vastly exaggerated by armchair videogame analysts...
A problem with your optimism is this: Let's say you use an 'outside CPU' to do AI computations. The game already had to do this as if you only had 'one' CPU (the PS3 itself), so it probably ended up using less than 20% of its CPU time (and probably a lot less than that) for AI. So you end up with an extra 20% of CPU time for better graphics - big deal. It's not worth the extra program complexity (and make no mistake - this capability will make games significantly more complicated).
All of this is ignoring whether the latency for network AI is even acceptable. It isn't for a lot of games. I have been playing a lot of the fighting game Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate lately. Many player actions in that game are measured in how many frames they take, with 60 total frames in each second. Many moves have periods of well less than 5 frames. The AI has to be able to respond at that kind of speed. The same is true for other popular genres like racing games.
I can't honestly think of any game task other than very non-responsive high-level AI (such as city traffic patterns or something) that would be suited to the latencies we are talking about. Maybe some types of physics calculations? That can be useful in some games, but you still go back to the problem that you aren't going to be able to realistically gain more than 30% or so of your CPU time back, without having game features in the first place that require more CPUs. That would be commercial suicide (at least in the forseeable future). Most of these high latency tasks just won't work using a 'low res' version.
The reason they only let her come back for 24 hours was that: A. She was an illusion. B. They only needed her that long to put the boy into the infinite loop (by the mother illusion telling him to go to sleep) the AIs had decided on.
An infinite loop for an AI is essentially a really nice way to euthanize them, of course.
Technically EA does not have to pay OT or they would have been sued by now.
Yeah, except EA has been sued for it by now. It isn't finished yet, but this stuff takes time. EA does have to pay overtime, because they have been breaking the law.
As to the specific features; the AI was interesting, but didn't do anything for me. I certainly felt more challenged by the grossly unbalanced power lavels ("let's empty multiple assault rifle clips into a single mid-grade bad-guy"), than super-clever AI. It may be an important milestone, but it didn't make the game fun for me.
Like a lot of your complaints, it seems like you don't know how to play Halo very well. No harm in that, but it does nullify some of your points.
The Assault Rifle is a piece of junk against targets like the Elite (though it is very useful against some later enemies) - the Covenant are most vulnerable to Covenant weapons, which is what you were 'supposed' to use. The power levels aren't unbalanced (though the odds are certainly against you) - you chose the wrong tool for that situation.
Because of this I assume you didn't play the Legendary difficulty level, which is where you really see the AI at work. It really almost turns into a different game as the difficulty ramps up.
As to the controls, they weren't some brand new thing. I'd been using identical or effectively identical controls in other console FPSes before the X-Box was released. What Halo got right was more subtle; I can't even put my finger on it. Halo felt right, while I was certainly slower than a mouse, I didn't feel gimpy like I do in every other console FPS. They balanced something about the inputs just right and they deserve recognition for that.
That balance you are talking about is the control innovation the original poster was talking about. Among other subtle things, Halo slows down your aiming speed when the reticle is over an enemy. That is what modern console FPS games are copying now.
Through its refinement, Halo also showed the world the 'correct way' to set up the controls, so it became the standard even if it wasn't the first use of such controls. That counts as an innovation, too, IMO. (And I would argue some of its elements were new - not a lot of games had a dedicated grenade or melee button before Halo!)
Regardless of specifics, new features in a game usually aren't widely copied unless the game is fun enough to notice and show these off. That is the case with Halo1: imperfect as it may be, it doesn't suck. Not even remotely. The game was fun for a lot of people, and to insist otherwise is just nonsense. A game doesn't get to be as loved as Halo1 is by millions of people if it isn't fun to them. It just didn't click with you (maybe because you didn't know how to play well - but that could just be the result).
Speaking of stupid, if the average price of a PC is a little over $700, isn't your range of "most PC sales" being between $700-1500 a little misleading or even (dare I say it) wrong?
Xbox games are pretty good about loading times, too (well, at least the decent ones). Some quality devs just seem to care a lot more about loading times (as they should), and Nintendo seems to make it a priority to even third parties.
Follow the news more, buddy - the rest of "us" don't need a link to big stories like this. But all the links you could want are here. Of course the White House (though not Bush personally, AFAIK) has since denied the statement was ever made. It all boils down to who you think is more of a liar - the White House Press Secretary (an ardent Bush defender) or Pat Robertson (an ardent Bush supporter).
When SEGA's CD system failed, Nintendo rethought it and told Sony they didn't want it anymore.
That's a funny way to 'reimagine' it. At a Japanese game convention Nintendo revealed to everyone else that they were going with Philips for the CD add-on, which was quite a surprise (and embarrassment) to Sony, who was their contractual partner on the project at that point. Nintendo chose to perform this backstab because they were unhappy that the Playstation contract allowed Sony to license games for it.
As a coward already pointed out, that simply isn't true in many union cases. Different actors and different baseball players make widely different salaries, pretty much all depending on their 'ability'.
Just as I would not approve of him molesting children, having sex with cows, performing satanic rituals, torturing animals, or having sex with other men. If he wants to do it anyway, let him do it cowering and hiding, in shame and regret. Then maybe he will eventually stop.
So how many more centuries before this starts working, exactly? I don't see signs of any of these stopping anytime soon (except "performing satanic rituals", which I assume is just a joke).
A Democrat who is opposed to homosexual marriage, who supports gun rights, who is socially conservative, can win. A Democrat who steps away from NAFTA and the WTO (unlike John Kerry or Bill Clinton), can win.
Kerry being opposed to homosexual marriage didn't seem to help him all that much. And supporting NAFTA and the WTO certainly didn't hurt Bush or Clinton.
Very few voters actually vote based on any kind of specific policy history, they vote based on who they already like and then pretend that guy follows their values (look at the Democrats who voted for Kerry because "he was against the Iraq war" - look at the Republicans who thought "Bush is decisive and sticks to his guns").
If the Democrats want to win they need to just field some good candidates and run a good campaign (how about actually presenting some liberal/progressive viewpoints next time?). Kerry was a joke.
But if the Democrats as a party want to win, they need more Sen. Millers, not more Sen. Kerrys, running for national office. And they can watch what little base they have completely erode. Very few progressives are going to vote for an obvious nutjob like Zell Miller.
The Game Paks used for Nintendo DS are different from those used for NES, Game Boy, Super NES, or N64. Unlike the old cartridges, which contain a semiconductor mask ROM that has to be taped out individually for each different program, the DS Game Paks use flash memory. I still think that would take longer than DVD manufacturing, but that would speed it up a lot. I stand corrected. Still, even previews of Ridge Racer back in early October complained about major problems - that is only a month (tops) to fix the game.
Did you also expect significantly more from the GBA than the Super NES provided? It takes years for Moore's law of semiconductor density to make miniaturization affordable. Yeah I did, actually. It isn't even up to the standards of the SNES (far worse sound, lower resolution, poorer controls, screen is too dark). Nintendo cheaped out on the GBA, which makes it easier to sell an upgraded model later on (Hello, SP! Hi DS! Also looking forward to that GBA upgrade Nintendo has mentioned, presumably coming next year!).
The comparatively slow response of a cheap LCD screen, possibly combined with texture coordinate jitter, will act as a faux texture filter. It already has on the GBA. 3D polygons is an entirely different ballgame than 2D. Previewers have complained about the lack of bilinear filtering already. It will be helped a little by the screen's characteristics, but the games are still going to look really blocky.
Unlike the PSP, which uses a traditional frame buffer approach to graphics composition, the Nintendo DS graphics hardware uses a form of raster-following triangle scan conversion that does not involve a frame buffer larger than about a scanline, so fill rate won't block running at 60fps. If there is a bottleneck, it will probably be T&L on a 67 MHz ARM9 CPU. That weak hardware is the bottleneck though. I fail to see how a slightly different rasterizer will eliminate slowdown when the hardware is pushed too far (again, previewers have already complained about it). Choppy animation/scrolling is choppy animation/scrolling, right?
All of this is just speculation, of course. We will find out the answers unbelievably soon...
For one thing, DS release titles may not have been finished at the time you saw them. For another, compare screenshots of Super Mario DS to Super Mario 64; for instance, the Mario model is a higher poly mesh. For another, have you seen a Nintendo DS in person? If not, then you haven't seen one at 60 fps, unlike N64's typical 20 to 30.
That is true about them not being finished. However, it isn't like games such as Ridge Racer are coming out in six months or a year from now - it is mere weeks away (and cartridges require more of a lead time to manufacture).
A slightly higher poly model of Mario doesn't really impress me. Mario64 looked good at the time, but I expect more from the DS than looking a little better than the almost decade-old launch titles for the N64! It's running in a lower resolution, too, isn't it? And no texture filter is available, so it is entirely likely the game even looks worse.
And I will be shocked if games like Mario64DS run at 60 fps. The DS can only handle about 20% more polygons than the N64 could (all of this is theoretical, of course - but that can't be avoided). I'm crossing my fingers that the hardware can do such things (framerate sits at the right hand of the gameplay god, IMO), but I don't see what makes you assume this will be the case.
Yes, Metroid Prime: Hunters. Looks only slightly worse than Metroid Prime.
Huh? This or that doesn't look remotely like this (which isn't even a particularly good screen shot to begin with). Not even close. And it doesn't look as good as Waverace64 (which isn't well-represented by screenshots), either.
Slashdot Mirror
The ending was tricky, but fairly plausible (at least up to the standard of the basic storyline's plausibility :D). The warp tunnel's main trick was in the order it transferred things - First In, Last Out. Witness the monkey (that was the first to enter the portal) being the last to leave it. Or the space station being the first to leave. Just think about it.
EA never dropped their new games to $20... they lowered the price, but not by that much. And Sega does have one advantage still - their games are better, and the "cheap enough to take a risk" price made sure a lot more gamers are aware of that now. That was the real goal, and sales indicate it probably worked. Won't know for sure until next year, of course...
Pretty sure the PSP batteries are completely replaceable. So really just PSP Battery version 2.0 is all you need. Very smart on Sony's part. Early adopters will buy it anyway, and a complaint of "it doesn't have enough battery life" is much easier to dissuade through a proposed upgrade then "its games suck".
And I still find it a little hard to believe, but supposedly the N-Gage is doing great business outside of the US. It is apparently very popular especially in Asian countries where it is 'free' (through long-term contracts). Just goes to show there are lots of ways for a portable game system to succeed outside the traditional Gameboy mode.
Feel the Magic is really for all ages (though it is rated Teen). Nothing adult about it. Like nearly all EA games, Urbz (especially the GBA version and its DS port) is definitely aimed at kids.
You are being pretty disengenous to say we can't see who PSP games are directed at "because it ain't out yet". Various big games for it are widely known and have been for some time: Metal Gear, Dynasty Warriors, Final Fantasy, Tenchu, Twisted Metal, Wipeout... It looks to be aiming at the exact same market the original PS1 did: older teens and men in their 20s. No surprise there - it would be pretty ridiculous to suggest that Sony would instead be suddenly going for the less-demanding younger audience, who also happen to buy less games.
(And though I am finding it impossible to find online, surely you follow videogame news enough to remember that Nintendo announced just what age-range the DS was aimed at. I believe it was around 12-15...)
Probably Canada, since those are the Canadian prices. You'll note the price ratios are basically the same as they are in the US, making the parent poster's argument just as sound (GBA SP half the price of a DS) even with American prices. Calm down...
I am not a fan of the series myself, but you would have to be pretty ignorant about videogaming trends to think Tekken is no longer a big deal to millions of people. Even though Tekken 4 was widely considered a failure, it did very good arcade and console business. Tekken 5 was hugely anticipated before release and is now doing awesome business in arcades around the world. Early word is that the game is quite good, too, avoiding most of the flaws that plagued Tekken 4. The PS2 version coming next year could possibly get up to Tekken3 sales numbers.
But the problem remains that the game needs to be fun with the default setup (a stock PS3), or it won't even sell in the first place. If the AI isn't good enough without extra CPUs, it won't be a good game. And if the AI is good enough, you don't really more CPUs to improve it to make the game more fun. It's already responsive enough/challenging/fun. Unless Sony somehow magically makes programming this capability almost seemless, developers are just going to focus on making the AI good enough for the default console, exactly like they do now.
There is no point to even trying to sell anyone on this until there's a bunch of Cell processors out there, so this is all wild speculation until then.
I agree. I think it is still valid to debate the possible merits until then, but it is important to remember that we can't really separate marketing from reality yet. It's going to be an interesting upcoming E3, as I assume Sony will start showing off the real PS3 tech at least a little (to counteract the Xbox2 announcement, if nothing else).
I agree, but I think Sony has a good gameplan here. The (apparent) battery-life problem can eventually be solved through better battery technology - the DS is stuck with underpowered graphics forever. (Software tricks will help a little here - but they can also help battery life problems.) Assuming you are in the running for the long haul, and Sony definitely is, going for 'too powerful' is probably the best approach to take.
And I think you do gloss over one important fact about 3D graphics and gameplay - more powerful hardware can make visuals clearer (either through texture filtering that the DS lacks, bump-mapping or lighting to give objects/environment more 'visual feedback', more complex geometry, more realism as opposed to visual metaphor, or even just a higher framerate). Clearer visuals can easily and directly lead to better 3D gameplay.
(Hint, hint Sony)
Neither portable maker is exactly innocent of overloading their new portables with extra nongaming features this time out. Pictochat is just as useless as storing MP3s.
Games like Sonic for Gamegear actually did sell like hot cakes. Though it didn't reach huge Gameboy sale levels, the failure of the Gamegear has been vastly exaggerated by armchair videogame analysts...
A problem with your optimism is this:
Let's say you use an 'outside CPU' to do AI computations. The game already had to do this as if you only had 'one' CPU (the PS3 itself), so it probably ended up using less than 20% of its CPU time (and probably a lot less than that) for AI. So you end up with an extra 20% of CPU time for better graphics - big deal. It's not worth the extra program complexity (and make no mistake - this capability will make games significantly more complicated).
All of this is ignoring whether the latency for network AI is even acceptable. It isn't for a lot of games. I have been playing a lot of the fighting game Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate lately. Many player actions in that game are measured in how many frames they take, with 60 total frames in each second. Many moves have periods of well less than 5 frames. The AI has to be able to respond at that kind of speed. The same is true for other popular genres like racing games.
I can't honestly think of any game task other than very non-responsive high-level AI (such as city traffic patterns or something) that would be suited to the latencies we are talking about. Maybe some types of physics calculations? That can be useful in some games, but you still go back to the problem that you aren't going to be able to realistically gain more than 30% or so of your CPU time back, without having game features in the first place that require more CPUs. That would be commercial suicide (at least in the forseeable future). Most of these high latency tasks just won't work using a 'low res' version.
Looks like you wrote that a little too dead-pan for the mods.
The reason they only let her come back for 24 hours was that:
A. She was an illusion.
B. They only needed her that long to put the boy into the infinite loop (by the mother illusion telling him to go to sleep) the AIs had decided on.
An infinite loop for an AI is essentially a really nice way to euthanize them, of course.
Yeah, except EA has been sued for it by now. It isn't finished yet, but this stuff takes time. EA does have to pay overtime, because they have been breaking the law.
Like a lot of your complaints, it seems like you don't know how to play Halo very well. No harm in that, but it does nullify some of your points.
The Assault Rifle is a piece of junk against targets like the Elite (though it is very useful against some later enemies) - the Covenant are most vulnerable to Covenant weapons, which is what you were 'supposed' to use. The power levels aren't unbalanced (though the odds are certainly against you) - you chose the wrong tool for that situation.
Because of this I assume you didn't play the Legendary difficulty level, which is where you really see the AI at work. It really almost turns into a different game as the difficulty ramps up.
That balance you are talking about is the control innovation the original poster was talking about. Among other subtle things, Halo slows down your aiming speed when the reticle is over an enemy. That is what modern console FPS games are copying now.
Through its refinement, Halo also showed the world the 'correct way' to set up the controls, so it became the standard even if it wasn't the first use of such controls. That counts as an innovation, too, IMO. (And I would argue some of its elements were new - not a lot of games had a dedicated grenade or melee button before Halo!)
Regardless of specifics, new features in a game usually aren't widely copied unless the game is fun enough to notice and show these off. That is the case with Halo1: imperfect as it may be, it doesn't suck. Not even remotely. The game was fun for a lot of people, and to insist otherwise is just nonsense. A game doesn't get to be as loved as Halo1 is by millions of people if it isn't fun to them. It just didn't click with you (maybe because you didn't know how to play well - but that could just be the result).
Speaking of stupid, if the average price of a PC is a little over $700, isn't your range of "most PC sales" being between $700-1500 a little misleading or even (dare I say it) wrong?
Xbox games are pretty good about loading times, too (well, at least the decent ones). Some quality devs just seem to care a lot more about loading times (as they should), and Nintendo seems to make it a priority to even third parties.
Deus Ex 1 and System Shock 2 are both really up your alley then. You might want to give them a shot.
Follow the news more, buddy - the rest of "us" don't need a link to big stories like this. But all the links you could want are here. Of course the White House (though not Bush personally, AFAIK) has since denied the statement was ever made. It all boils down to who you think is more of a liar - the White House Press Secretary (an ardent Bush defender) or Pat Robertson (an ardent Bush supporter).
When SEGA's CD system failed, Nintendo rethought it and told Sony they didn't want it anymore.
That's a funny way to 'reimagine' it. At a Japanese game convention Nintendo revealed to everyone else that they were going with Philips for the CD add-on, which was quite a surprise (and embarrassment) to Sony, who was their contractual partner on the project at that point. Nintendo chose to perform this backstab because they were unhappy that the Playstation contract allowed Sony to license games for it.
As a coward already pointed out, that simply isn't true in many union cases. Different actors and different baseball players make widely different salaries, pretty much all depending on their 'ability'.
Just as I would not approve of him molesting children, having sex with cows, performing satanic rituals, torturing animals, or having sex with other men. If he wants to do it anyway, let him do it cowering and hiding, in shame and regret. Then maybe he will eventually stop.
So how many more centuries before this starts working, exactly? I don't see signs of any of these stopping anytime soon (except "performing satanic rituals", which I assume is just a joke).
A Democrat who is opposed to homosexual marriage, who supports gun rights, who is socially conservative, can win. A Democrat who steps away from NAFTA and the WTO (unlike John Kerry or Bill Clinton), can win.
Kerry being opposed to homosexual marriage didn't seem to help him all that much. And supporting NAFTA and the WTO certainly didn't hurt Bush or Clinton.
Very few voters actually vote based on any kind of specific policy history, they vote based on who they already like and then pretend that guy follows their values (look at the Democrats who voted for Kerry because "he was against the Iraq war" - look at the Republicans who thought "Bush is decisive and sticks to his guns").
If the Democrats want to win they need to just field some good candidates and run a good campaign (how about actually presenting some liberal/progressive viewpoints next time?). Kerry was a joke.
But if the Democrats as a party want to win, they need more Sen. Millers, not more Sen. Kerrys, running for national office.
And they can watch what little base they have completely erode. Very few progressives are going to vote for an obvious nutjob like Zell Miller.
Anti-Bush is not the same thing as Leftwing. Neither is pushing people to vote for Kerry!
The Game Paks used for Nintendo DS are different from those used for NES, Game Boy, Super NES, or N64. Unlike the old cartridges, which contain a semiconductor mask ROM that has to be taped out individually for each different program, the DS Game Paks use flash memory.
I still think that would take longer than DVD manufacturing, but that would speed it up a lot. I stand corrected. Still, even previews of Ridge Racer back in early October complained about major problems - that is only a month (tops) to fix the game.
Did you also expect significantly more from the GBA than the Super NES provided? It takes years for Moore's law of semiconductor density to make miniaturization affordable.
Yeah I did, actually. It isn't even up to the standards of the SNES (far worse sound, lower resolution, poorer controls, screen is too dark). Nintendo cheaped out on the GBA, which makes it easier to sell an upgraded model later on (Hello, SP! Hi DS! Also looking forward to that GBA upgrade Nintendo has mentioned, presumably coming next year!).
The comparatively slow response of a cheap LCD screen, possibly combined with texture coordinate jitter, will act as a faux texture filter. It already has on the GBA.
3D polygons is an entirely different ballgame than 2D. Previewers have complained about the lack of bilinear filtering already. It will be helped a little by the screen's characteristics, but the games are still going to look really blocky.
Unlike the PSP, which uses a traditional frame buffer approach to graphics composition, the Nintendo DS graphics hardware uses a form of raster-following triangle scan conversion that does not involve a frame buffer larger than about a scanline, so fill rate won't block running at 60fps. If there is a bottleneck, it will probably be T&L on a 67 MHz ARM9 CPU.
That weak hardware is the bottleneck though. I fail to see how a slightly different rasterizer will eliminate slowdown when the hardware is pushed too far (again, previewers have already complained about it). Choppy animation/scrolling is choppy animation/scrolling, right?
All of this is just speculation, of course. We will find out the answers unbelievably soon...
For one thing, DS release titles may not have been finished at the time you saw them. For another, compare screenshots of Super Mario DS to Super Mario 64; for instance, the Mario model is a higher poly mesh. For another, have you seen a Nintendo DS in person? If not, then you haven't seen one at 60 fps, unlike N64's typical 20 to 30.
That is true about them not being finished. However, it isn't like games such as Ridge Racer are coming out in six months or a year from now - it is mere weeks away (and cartridges require more of a lead time to manufacture).
A slightly higher poly model of Mario doesn't really impress me. Mario64 looked good at the time, but I expect more from the DS than looking a little better than the almost decade-old launch titles for the N64! It's running in a lower resolution, too, isn't it? And no texture filter is available, so it is entirely likely the game even looks worse.
And I will be shocked if games like Mario64DS run at 60 fps. The DS can only handle about 20% more polygons than the N64 could (all of this is theoretical, of course - but that can't be avoided). I'm crossing my fingers that the hardware can do such things (framerate sits at the right hand of the gameplay god, IMO), but I don't see what makes you assume this will be the case.
Yes, Metroid Prime: Hunters. Looks only slightly worse than Metroid Prime.
Huh? This or that doesn't look remotely like this (which isn't even a particularly good screen shot to begin with). Not even close. And it doesn't look as good as Waverace64 (which isn't well-represented by screenshots), either.