The thumb strap attaches on the right side of the DS, so it might not be long enough to reach your left thumb without detaching it.
I'd still recommend the stylus for most games, though. My lefty friend had no problem playing Kirby for several hours. And since the buttons are oriented in a diamond pattern, they're easy to use as an alternate d-pad for lefties.
The thumb strap is mostly useful for games that simulate an analog stick, like Mario 64 and Metroid Prime: Hunters. But for games that require pointing at specific points, like Kirby, Meteos, and Advance Wars, you really need the precision of the stylus.
Batteries might not be the issue here, although the PSP's battery life seems to be less than ideal.
The thing that makes the PSP expensive to operate is the use of Sony's memory format. A Memory Stick Pro Duo seems to cost (on average) about twice as much as a comparitively sized CF or SD card. While that's not a big deal on its own, the PSP's disc-based design forces consumers to buy memory cards in order to save games. In addition, since the PSP is being touted as a multimedia machine, it can be expected that many people will want bigger memory cards to store movies and music.
The DS, on the other hand, has free save space included with each game. If people want to use the multimedia features of the GBA Movie Player or Play-Yan, they can use the cheaper (and more standard) SD and CF cards. So while batteries may not be a big issue, the PSP introduces a new problem that may be even more expensive, depending on the case.
It's also attributed to him at Miyamoto Shrine and Wikiquote. If that quote is a mangled mistranslation of another man's comment, it's not just Slashdotters that are confused.
"Recently they have dropped hints for a Zelda launch title."
IIRC, there was never any hint that it'll be a launch title. They're just saying it's going to happen eventually.
It's kind of like they did at Spaceworld 2000 with the GameCube Zelda tech demo. Of course, Nintendo later changed the entire style of the game, and we all know how that turned out. So this time instead of showing a speculatory demo (and possibly causing mass fanboy backlash), they're just going to tell us about it.
The price drop will no doubt help the sales of those two titles. $20 is enough to push some of the fence-sitters into buying a DS, along with Nintendogs or Advance Wars. Maybe it wasn't absolutely necessary, but you can't deny that it'll improve sales - which is probably the most important factor in the PSP/DS race right now.
A game is never really "finished", just released at a certain point in its development. From what Aonuma has said in interviews, the game has been very close to completion. Nintendo could have released this game in June, but it would have been lacking in a lot of areas and had some gimmicky fetch-quests to lengthen the game.
Clearly Miyamoto and Aonuma don't find the game in its current form acceptable. They're attempting to improve on what many people consider the best game of all time (OoT). "Finished" isn't acceptable to them; it needs to be as close to perfect as possible. If that means reworking a frustrating dungeon, tweaking some boss battles, or adding new quests to improve the flow of the game, then that's what it'll take.
Twilight Princess is intended to be the most ambitious game Nintendo has made in recent history, the defining title for the GameCube, and the quintessential installment of the Zelda series. A few months of waiting is a small price to pay if they can actually deliver that.
When my game console can display the CG from Lord of the Rings in realtime, you can tell me that resolution matters. Until graphics become good enough that the viewer can't detect individual polygons, a higher resolution just serves to make the already large polygons more pronounced. I've yet to play a game where a majority of details are smaller than one pixel in 480p, and I'm not seeing any on the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, either.
"Think of all the HD cutscenes game makers will want to include, along with hi-res models. Now they can, so they will - it's as simple as that. Art will expand to fill availiable transport mediums. More space means less compression is needed, which is nice for a higher quality."
Why will there be any need for HD cutscenes when the console itself already produces high-quality graphics and outputs at 720p? Character models and textures require a fraction of the space that an HD cutscene would fill.
It sounded like he's saying that developers can't rely on the hard drive for their games, since Microsoft might stop supporting it in the future. Also, since it's optional, some gamers may choose not to buy it.
So in order to appeal to the broadest audience, most 360 games will need to save to a memory card, and they won't be able to rely on a hard drive for streaming. That will really cut down on the potential for certain games, which is disheartening especially after Microsoft touted the gaming-related benefits of a hard drive this generation. Basically they're saying, "The hard drive can improve games, but not enough for it to be worth supporting." It doesn't sound like we'll see any real uses for the HD besides serving as a huge memory card and a digital media storage bank.
How are you defining AAA games?
Here's my list, tell me where I screwed up. These are the exclusive (i.e. not ports) top-tier games for each system that are scheduled to release before Christmas.
DS:
Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Nintendogs
Lost in Blue
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Metroid Prime: Hunters
Age of Empires: The Age of Kings
Mario Kart DS
Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble
Sonic Rush
Animal Crossing DS
PSP:
Burnout Legends
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
Infected? (I have no idea about this one, but it sounds like it's somewhat anticipated)
SOCOM
So, ten for the DS vs. three or four for PSP, depending on whether or not Infected is any good. I'd say my original prediction was better than you're giving me credit for.
N-Sider is reporting that 1.89 million DSes have been sold in the US (and 6.65 worldwide), according to Nintendo. Sony hasn't released any numbers since the launch, where they sold 500,000 units. Since then, it sounds like the PSP is usually leading weekly sales by a slight margin, but that may not have been enough to put it past the DS's million-unit lead from 2004. For all intents and purposes, they're basically tied in the US. The difference is almost certainly less than half a million units.
As for the other markets, the DS has sold over a million in Europe (where the PSP hasn't launched yet). In Japan, the DS is leading by a little over a million units.
Going by the list in your link, only 53 of those games are actually available in Japan. The rest are available only for preorder. Maybe you're seeing UMD videos in the shops? For comparison, the DS has 60 released games in Japan, so it's not like the PSP is alone in this respect.
Regardless of the actual number of games available worldwide, the American press almost always reports the US numbers when directly addressing an American audience. 1up wasn't spreading false information, they were simply reporting the most relevant facts. Their point was that since the PSP's launch, software releases have been few and far between, which is unusual for a Sony-backed platform.
Even with the music, though, the game probably wouldn't take as long to localize as a text-heavy game like Zelda or Animal Crossing. A good share of the songlist is Nintendo themes or classical music that would be relevant to any region.
As for Electroplankton... Yeah, I don't know about that one. For all the hype they've given it, it seems like they're really serious about its potential. Maybe they're saving it for the inevitable game drought next spring?
Sony's official PSP site only recognizes 40 released games, and it lists several games that haven't been launched in America.
Maybe you didn't notice that 1up is an American media company. They are reporting on the state of the PSP in America. If a game can't be found in Best Buy or Target, 95% of American gamers won't care about it.
I'm not sure that localization is the issue. Games like Electroplankton and Band Bros. have very little English, but they still haven't been released outside of Japan. I have no idea why, but I suspect that NOA might be trying to manufacture a certain image for the DS, and those games don't fit with that image. I don't know where that leaves Nintendogs and Kirby, though.
The only other possibility is that they're saving the launches of those games to be released early next year, after the Christmas rush. Quirky titles like Electroplankton might be noticed more when they don't have to compete against the likes of Mario Kart, Nintendogs and Metroid.
The ESRB rates the content placed on the game disc and distributed by the publisher. Example: The original version of Half-Life wasn't rated for the content of Counter-Strike (a mod), but when Sierra distributed a retail version of Counter-Strike, it was subject to the ESRB's ratings. In GTA's case, the Hot Coffee game already existed on the disc, and the only "hacking" involved was used to access the minigame. I suppose SSBM could also fall into this category, although none of this secret content would have changed the rating.
In the case of The Sims user-created nude textures (which already exist, by the way), EA couldn't be held responsible for what a third-party added to the game code after the game had already been released. As long as the original game disc didn't contain any nude textures, EA is in the clear, regardless of what nuts like Jack Thompson say.
I imagine the solution to all of this will involve a new disclaimer. The ESRB already uses "Game Experience May Change During Online Play" when online play may introduce additional profanity or inappropriate user-created content. If this situation continues, they'll probably introduce another disclaimer to cover the effects of unrated user-created mods and hacks.
"Are the companies that made those games even still around today?"
For the most part, yes. A good share of the top NES/SNES games were made by developers like Square, Enix, Konami, Namco, Capcom and Tecmo, all of which are still alive and well. There are a few NES-era companies that have died, but for the most part, the most popular ones are all still here.
"There is nothing UP on the PSP the damn thing is too expensive. Developers know that, users know that. wait for the price drop to see what the PSP is about."
Price drops don't make games. Uncertain developers won't start making exclusive games until consumers start buying them. Maybe GTA will jumpstart that trend, but by that time Nintendo will be riding down the wave of their great holiday lineup. By the time developers really start jumping onboard with the PSP, the DS will already have a [i]very[/i] substantial lineup.
"Lack of sales yep, but In the latest EGM I read the PSP games (as bad and few as they are!) are on the top 10."
Which chart is this? A PSP game or two might make the odd weekly sales chart in the US, but very few PSP games have ever made the top 10 in Japan, and none have done it in Europe (for obvious reasons). Even in the US, I don't think there are any PSP games on the yearly sales chart.
"...where does it say you can only have one handheld?"
Good point. But for most consumers, their wallet is the restricion in this case. The average gamer uses their handheld in very few situations, and the cost vs. reward for a second handheld is much lower than for another console.
"As I said above, the smaller game library is because the DS has been around for a while."
Not by much. The DS was released four months ahead of the PSP in the US, but in Japan (where most of the current DS and PSP games have been developed) it led by a mere ten days.
"Give the PSP till Christmas and its library will definitely be better."
Depends on your definition of "better", I guess. The only big PSP-exclusive games coming out this year are GTA and Death Jr. Nearly everything else is a PS2 port. The DS, on the other hand, has about a dozen exclusive AAA games launching before Christmas.
"I would rather have the contiguous screen of the PSP and have it divided up by the game then have the split screen of the DS and have an interface forced upon me because the developer has no other choice."
It all comes down to personal preference, but I'd rather have the touchscreen of the DS than have D-pad and buttons forced upon me.
"Some might counter, 'Two people can play on one system at once!'"
I hope nobody's ever actually told you that. That's hardly an advantage at all, and I can't think of a single DS game that does it. There are plenty of uses for a second screen. First, you couldn't fold the system if it had a single screen. That's a huge advantage in terms of durability. A lot of games use the second screen for maps, data displays, and menus. That clears up the second screen for an HUD-free display, which is really helpful. Finally, you can use the touch screen as an onscreen keyboard, which will be a necessity for any online communication.
"Unless of course you wanted the extremely sexy dual screens, then you WOULD have to buy a DS. Shame, I was hoping for an All-In-One console."
Or unless you wanted a working touchscreen, a built-in microphone, and the ability to play ad-hoc or WiFi games against other DS owners. Or a framerate higher than 2 fps. Other than that, you'd be good.;)
Slashdot Mirror
The thumb strap attaches on the right side of the DS, so it might not be long enough to reach your left thumb without detaching it.
I'd still recommend the stylus for most games, though. My lefty friend had no problem playing Kirby for several hours. And since the buttons are oriented in a diamond pattern, they're easy to use as an alternate d-pad for lefties.
The thumb strap is mostly useful for games that simulate an analog stick, like Mario 64 and Metroid Prime: Hunters. But for games that require pointing at specific points, like Kirby, Meteos, and Advance Wars, you really need the precision of the stylus.
Batteries might not be the issue here, although the PSP's battery life seems to be less than ideal.
The thing that makes the PSP expensive to operate is the use of Sony's memory format. A Memory Stick Pro Duo seems to cost (on average) about twice as much as a comparitively sized CF or SD card. While that's not a big deal on its own, the PSP's disc-based design forces consumers to buy memory cards in order to save games. In addition, since the PSP is being touted as a multimedia machine, it can be expected that many people will want bigger memory cards to store movies and music.
The DS, on the other hand, has free save space included with each game. If people want to use the multimedia features of the GBA Movie Player or Play-Yan, they can use the cheaper (and more standard) SD and CF cards. So while batteries may not be a big issue, the PSP introduces a new problem that may be even more expensive, depending on the case.
Leeeerroooy Jenkins!
You think a lot like Rockstar. Just toss in any random idea anyone comes up with.
"Hmm... that DDR game is kinda popular."
or
"I wonder if people will enjoy collecting oysters?"
Nintendo's fiscal year ends on March 31.
It's also attributed to him at Miyamoto Shrine and Wikiquote. If that quote is a mangled mistranslation of another man's comment, it's not just Slashdotters that are confused.
"Recently they have dropped hints for a Zelda launch title."
IIRC, there was never any hint that it'll be a launch title. They're just saying it's going to happen eventually.
It's kind of like they did at Spaceworld 2000 with the GameCube Zelda tech demo. Of course, Nintendo later changed the entire style of the game, and we all know how that turned out. So this time instead of showing a speculatory demo (and possibly causing mass fanboy backlash), they're just going to tell us about it.
The price drop will no doubt help the sales of those two titles. $20 is enough to push some of the fence-sitters into buying a DS, along with Nintendogs or Advance Wars. Maybe it wasn't absolutely necessary, but you can't deny that it'll improve sales - which is probably the most important factor in the PSP/DS race right now.
A game is never really "finished", just released at a certain point in its development. From what Aonuma has said in interviews, the game has been very close to completion. Nintendo could have released this game in June, but it would have been lacking in a lot of areas and had some gimmicky fetch-quests to lengthen the game.
Clearly Miyamoto and Aonuma don't find the game in its current form acceptable. They're attempting to improve on what many people consider the best game of all time (OoT). "Finished" isn't acceptable to them; it needs to be as close to perfect as possible. If that means reworking a frustrating dungeon, tweaking some boss battles, or adding new quests to improve the flow of the game, then that's what it'll take.
Twilight Princess is intended to be the most ambitious game Nintendo has made in recent history, the defining title for the GameCube, and the quintessential installment of the Zelda series. A few months of waiting is a small price to pay if they can actually deliver that.
When my game console can display the CG from Lord of the Rings in realtime, you can tell me that resolution matters. Until graphics become good enough that the viewer can't detect individual polygons, a higher resolution just serves to make the already large polygons more pronounced. I've yet to play a game where a majority of details are smaller than one pixel in 480p, and I'm not seeing any on the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, either.
"Think of all the HD cutscenes game makers will want to include, along with hi-res models. Now they can, so they will - it's as simple as that. Art will expand to fill availiable transport mediums. More space means less compression is needed, which is nice for a higher quality."
Why will there be any need for HD cutscenes when the console itself already produces high-quality graphics and outputs at 720p? Character models and textures require a fraction of the space that an HD cutscene would fill.
It sounded like he's saying that developers can't rely on the hard drive for their games, since Microsoft might stop supporting it in the future. Also, since it's optional, some gamers may choose not to buy it.
So in order to appeal to the broadest audience, most 360 games will need to save to a memory card, and they won't be able to rely on a hard drive for streaming. That will really cut down on the potential for certain games, which is disheartening especially after Microsoft touted the gaming-related benefits of a hard drive this generation. Basically they're saying, "The hard drive can improve games, but not enough for it to be worth supporting." It doesn't sound like we'll see any real uses for the HD besides serving as a huge memory card and a digital media storage bank.
How are you defining AAA games?
Here's my list, tell me where I screwed up. These are the exclusive (i.e. not ports) top-tier games for each system that are scheduled to release before Christmas.
DS:
Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Nintendogs
Lost in Blue
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Metroid Prime: Hunters
Age of Empires: The Age of Kings
Mario Kart DS
Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble
Sonic Rush
Animal Crossing DS
PSP:
Burnout Legends
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
Infected? (I have no idea about this one, but it sounds like it's somewhat anticipated)
SOCOM
So, ten for the DS vs. three or four for PSP, depending on whether or not Infected is any good. I'd say my original prediction was better than you're giving me credit for.
N-Sider is reporting that 1.89 million DSes have been sold in the US (and 6.65 worldwide), according to Nintendo. Sony hasn't released any numbers since the launch, where they sold 500,000 units. Since then, it sounds like the PSP is usually leading weekly sales by a slight margin, but that may not have been enough to put it past the DS's million-unit lead from 2004. For all intents and purposes, they're basically tied in the US. The difference is almost certainly less than half a million units.
As for the other markets, the DS has sold over a million in Europe (where the PSP hasn't launched yet). In Japan, the DS is leading by a little over a million units.
Going by the list in your link, only 53 of those games are actually available in Japan. The rest are available only for preorder. Maybe you're seeing UMD videos in the shops? For comparison, the DS has 60 released games in Japan, so it's not like the PSP is alone in this respect.
Regardless of the actual number of games available worldwide, the American press almost always reports the US numbers when directly addressing an American audience. 1up wasn't spreading false information, they were simply reporting the most relevant facts. Their point was that since the PSP's launch, software releases have been few and far between, which is unusual for a Sony-backed platform.
Oh yeah, the music. Heh. I forgot that part.
Even with the music, though, the game probably wouldn't take as long to localize as a text-heavy game like Zelda or Animal Crossing. A good share of the songlist is Nintendo themes or classical music that would be relevant to any region.
As for Electroplankton... Yeah, I don't know about that one. For all the hype they've given it, it seems like they're really serious about its potential. Maybe they're saving it for the inevitable game drought next spring?
Sony's official PSP site only recognizes 40 released games, and it lists several games that haven't been launched in America.
Maybe you didn't notice that 1up is an American media company. They are reporting on the state of the PSP in America. If a game can't be found in Best Buy or Target, 95% of American gamers won't care about it.
I'm not sure that localization is the issue. Games like Electroplankton and Band Bros. have very little English, but they still haven't been released outside of Japan. I have no idea why, but I suspect that NOA might be trying to manufacture a certain image for the DS, and those games don't fit with that image. I don't know where that leaves Nintendogs and Kirby, though.
The only other possibility is that they're saving the launches of those games to be released early next year, after the Christmas rush. Quirky titles like Electroplankton might be noticed more when they don't have to compete against the likes of Mario Kart, Nintendogs and Metroid.
The ESRB rates the content placed on the game disc and distributed by the publisher. Example: The original version of Half-Life wasn't rated for the content of Counter-Strike (a mod), but when Sierra distributed a retail version of Counter-Strike, it was subject to the ESRB's ratings. In GTA's case, the Hot Coffee game already existed on the disc, and the only "hacking" involved was used to access the minigame. I suppose SSBM could also fall into this category, although none of this secret content would have changed the rating.
In the case of The Sims user-created nude textures (which already exist, by the way), EA couldn't be held responsible for what a third-party added to the game code after the game had already been released. As long as the original game disc didn't contain any nude textures, EA is in the clear, regardless of what nuts like Jack Thompson say.
I imagine the solution to all of this will involve a new disclaimer. The ESRB already uses "Game Experience May Change During Online Play" when online play may introduce additional profanity or inappropriate user-created content. If this situation continues, they'll probably introduce another disclaimer to cover the effects of unrated user-created mods and hacks.
It's getting pretty good reviews, too. If it was only online, it sounds like the game would be the holy grail of the Advance Wars series.
"Are the companies that made those games even still around today?"
For the most part, yes. A good share of the top NES/SNES games were made by developers like Square, Enix, Konami, Namco, Capcom and Tecmo, all of which are still alive and well. There are a few NES-era companies that have died, but for the most part, the most popular ones are all still here.
"There is nothing UP on the PSP the damn thing is too expensive. Developers know that, users know that. wait for the price drop to see what the PSP is about."
Price drops don't make games. Uncertain developers won't start making exclusive games until consumers start buying them. Maybe GTA will jumpstart that trend, but by that time Nintendo will be riding down the wave of their great holiday lineup. By the time developers really start jumping onboard with the PSP, the DS will already have a [i]very[/i] substantial lineup.
"Lack of sales yep, but In the latest EGM I read the PSP games (as bad and few as they are!) are on the top 10."
Which chart is this? A PSP game or two might make the odd weekly sales chart in the US, but very few PSP games have ever made the top 10 in Japan, and none have done it in Europe (for obvious reasons). Even in the US, I don't think there are any PSP games on the yearly sales chart.
"...where does it say you can only have one handheld?"
Good point. But for most consumers, their wallet is the restricion in this case. The average gamer uses their handheld in very few situations, and the cost vs. reward for a second handheld is much lower than for another console.
"I think its' strength may yet lie in support for UMD movies."
If Apple releases the rumored iPod Video and a digital movie download service, UMD will be obsolete faster than the MiniDisc.
"As I said above, the smaller game library is because the DS has been around for a while."
Not by much. The DS was released four months ahead of the PSP in the US, but in Japan (where most of the current DS and PSP games have been developed) it led by a mere ten days.
"Give the PSP till Christmas and its library will definitely be better."
Depends on your definition of "better", I guess. The only big PSP-exclusive games coming out this year are GTA and Death Jr. Nearly everything else is a PS2 port. The DS, on the other hand, has about a dozen exclusive AAA games launching before Christmas.
"I would rather have the contiguous screen of the PSP and have it divided up by the game then have the split screen of the DS and have an interface forced upon me because the developer has no other choice."
It all comes down to personal preference, but I'd rather have the touchscreen of the DS than have D-pad and buttons forced upon me.
"Some might counter, 'Two people can play on one system at once!'"
I hope nobody's ever actually told you that. That's hardly an advantage at all, and I can't think of a single DS game that does it. There are plenty of uses for a second screen. First, you couldn't fold the system if it had a single screen. That's a huge advantage in terms of durability. A lot of games use the second screen for maps, data displays, and menus. That clears up the second screen for an HUD-free display, which is really helpful. Finally, you can use the touch screen as an onscreen keyboard, which will be a necessity for any online communication.
"Unless of course you wanted the extremely sexy dual screens, then you WOULD have to buy a DS. Shame, I was hoping for an All-In-One console."
;)
Or unless you wanted a working touchscreen, a built-in microphone, and the ability to play ad-hoc or WiFi games against other DS owners. Or a framerate higher than 2 fps. Other than that, you'd be good.