I'd like to discuss the new Nintendo DS now that there's some actual news coming out about it but I don't know if many people here have even heard about it. I guess I'll start by putting links to information about it so you know what it is.

A somewhat complete dossier on the system (http://gba.gamespy.com/articles/529/529776p1.html)

The final system design (http://gameboy.ign.com/articles/534/534070p1.html?fromint=1)

A bunch of new games announced for the system. (http://www.nintendojo.com/infocus/view_item.php?1091461362)

This has become a huge topic for discussion on gaming forums and I'm interested to know what peple here think about it.

I'm saving up for the PSP but when I saw some of the games...I mite buy a DS instead :D

It will be cheaper. I'd be surprised if PSP sells for under $299 (american) and PSP's battery life is like two hours if the game reads off the disk constantly. Not to mention the fact that most of its games will be PS2 ports.

It looked quite promising on E3, but I don't think it will be more 'revolutionary' than GBA. However, I think it will beat Sony's PSP.

Ya think? cause all my friends say the PSP pwns the DS XD

.

Originally posted by Ayanami@Aug 2 2004, 07:54 PM
Ya think? cause all my friends say the PSP pwns the DS XD
Yes, because the smaller formats (GB, GBA etc..) have and will always be more interesting and fun to play when it&#39;s Nintendo&#39;s work. Their games just...fit. Also, it will be hard for the PSP users to carry around extra batteries all the time. <_<

I&#39;ve found that the inspiration in the games of most of nintendo&#39;s handhelds, makes them more playable but for the DS im not 100% sure how people are going to react to using the two screens

ds seems like pointless inovation....... see where that&#39;s gotten sega?

only if the psp allowed music burning and possibly let ppl burn ps1 games on to blank umd&#39;s.....

would have been the system of the decade....

I think the DS will offer far more innovation than the GBA. The GBA only brought the handheld graphics level up to the SNES&#39;s abilities. The DS has the touchscreen, microphone, wirelees local and internet support and graphics that are about on par with the dreamcast. It would be hard not to innovate on that machine.

I think the PSP won&#39;t really make it that far because of three things: price, battery life and games. It&#39;s price is estimated at being somewhere between &#036;300-&#036;400. That&#39;s just a lot of money. It&#39;s battery life will only be about two or three hours unless it loads the whole game into RAM and the PSP doesn&#39;t have enough RAM to do that.

Finally, its games will either be ports of PS2 games or overpriced. Since the graphics are so far advanced, the development cost on a PSP project will be very close to that of a home console so the cost per game will have to be close to that of a home console. The system is also so close to the PS2 in architecture and capabilities that it&#39;s almost hard to justify not porting PS2 games.

I&#39;m also not sure when Sony&#39;s expecting to have the PSP launch. It didn&#39;t have anything playable at E3. The closest it got was having tech demos running on networked computers being fed into the PSP&#39;s screens. At least the DS was playable.

I think that Sega should just remake the genesis. That thing was awesome but it took EIGHT FRICKIN BATTERIES&#33;

Who said the PSP battery life is 2 hours? Sony haven&#39;t actually confirmed this. I think their official statement was 10 hours, no?
How about that, i actually know something about something. Can someone clear this up for me. What is the extent of GBDS&#39; wireless connection (how powerful is it and what are its capabilites/ what can it do?)?

Sony&#39;s official statement was that the battery life would "be similar to that of a portable DVD player" Which means 2 hours (They also said at some point it would be 2-10 hours). The reason it&#39;s so short is because the disks spin. This means a motor has to be working and motors eat through batteries.

The NDS (it&#39;s name is official now and has no Gameboy affiliation) has two seperate wireless capabilities. By using bluetooth (the same technology in their awesome wireless controller) it has a 100 foot LAN capability. It also has wireless internet capabilities the same as most laptops. Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn&#39;t have any anounced plans to use the internet capabilities in first party games.

On a wireless LAN it also has the ability to play multiplayer off of only one copy of the game by downloading the game from the host NDS.

Edit: @Ayanami

Unforutnately after failing twice in the handheld market Sega decided never to try that again. Especially since now Genesis games are being ported to the GBA and Sega refuses to make anymore hardware. Not to mention the fact they&#39;ve been doing so badly that they have to merge with Sammy now.

.

I&#39;m sure the PSP will have a rechargable battery system which would make it more &#39;&#39;worth it&#39;&#39; overall, no? Ok, NDS, gotcha. I haven&#39;t been following the gaming scene for a looooong time. I only just noticed there is a gaming forum here so I thought i&#39;d check it out. :heh:

They all have rechargeable batteries now. Ever since backlights or sidelights were added there hasn&#39;t really been any other choice.

the whole handheld hardware industry is going mad. their point in existance was to provide short, simple, stupid games for kids to play on while on long-distance travel.. something like PSP and DS is like computer laptops with 1 hr battery, utterly useless as a portable machine, it&#39;d be most likely that i&#39;ll play it at home with an adaptor stuck into the plug so i won&#39;t run out of battery in 5 minutes

even if they say, lasts like 50 hrs, a gameboy should be a gameboy =_= you play tetris with your brother on it in a 15 hr long flight, no more, no less. imagine playing final fantasy LXXVIII on a PSPIII or Gameboy SDLSPISX... would you rather have a powerful handheld, or a powerful console in your lounge?

drinking a cup of espresso in a styroform cup while running to catch a bus in a rainy day is NOT the same as drinking the same espresso in your living room on a comfortable laz-i-boy chair in a sunny day. This handheld stupidity has got to stop

Maybe I&#39;m a little jaded since I had to do for years without a console but I&#39;ve always felt that handheld games don&#39;t get enough credit. The GBA has provided a rebirth of 2D gamese. The DS seems on track to give a whole different gaming experience, one that wouldn&#39;t make much sense on a home console.

I play my GBA SP more than my PS2 and Gamecube combined so I don&#39;t agree at all that it&#39;s only for travelling. I&#39;d be pretty pissed if I had just paid &#036;130 in order to only get a few hours of enjoyment each year. There are many great games on handhelds that get overlooked because of the "handhelds are for travelling only" mentatlity. I&#39;ll take the three awesome GBA castlevanias over the one lackluster PS2 castlevania anyday.

Oh and for FF78 I&#39;d much rather be playing it on my handheld. The best RPG&#39;s I&#39;ve played in the last three years have all been on GBA and I see no reason why good RPGs should stop going there.

Well, I did a report on both of these and this is what I came up with..

"In conclusion, It has come to me that the PSP has the far greater power, I mean, being able to play PS2 games on a handheld is just unfathimable to me right now, but the innavation goes to the DS... For what it may lack in the processing department; to be exact it is 64-bits less than that of the PSP; it covers with it&#39;s own unique design... It is developer friendly; Game, Set, and Match... And what makes hardware worth the purcase; Software. And where does software come from; Developers. Enough said. It is clear that just by this little bit of information can clearly define which is the better of the two..."

I left a lot out but it displays general information, and my opinion towards it.

this thing is gonna rock cauz compared to Sony PSP its lasts more then 2 hours :P.... the games are gonna be quite good but the touch screen is a bit overdoing..... with the sonic game vor nintendo DS you have to rub the screen faster faster to be faster and faster...... a bit brainless

Originally posted by Ayanami@Aug 2 2004, 08:54 PM
Ya think? cause all my friends say the PSP pwns the DS XD
As long as your friends haven&#39;t tried both systems they should shut up.

Nintendo has years of experience with mobile gaming systems. Sony doesn&#39;t. I rest my case.

the playstation brand is now just as established in the industry as the game boy...

sony has unlimited marketing power...

remember the original spiderman?? u couldn&#39;t watch tv without seeing a trailer........

if sony plays this right they could become a real power in the hand held industry as well...

but i&#39;d advise that ppl wait a year or so before actually purchasing one...

since there is also a big chance that they&#39;ll fail right off the bat....

i learned my lesson from buying the neogeo pocket...

Hmm... everyone has good points here, I&#39;m not quite sure where to start.

Ling, you&#39;re very right about the brand recognition of PSP. Nintendo isn&#39;t even planning to go with the Gameboy name (they want to have three different types of systems going at once) so that could help or hinder. At leasst without the gameboy name and the new sleeker look, it will probably be viewed as a bit of agadget too, not just a toy.

Angelic, I&#39;d realy love to agree with you but, when Sony came in and stole the market from Nintendo, they had no real experience with games whatsoever. Of course Nintendo was making a huge mistake of sticking with cartridges then, whereas the cartridge medium they&#39;re using with the DS makes sense and I don&#39;t see any flaws quite as glaring as the ones they made with N64.

Defrag, I should mention that the battery power of the DS is 12-18 hours, basically the same as a GBA SP. I just don&#39;t think that&#39;s been mentioned anywhere yet. The Sonic game shown by Sega at E3 was only a tech demo and was just meant to show how Sonic may show up on the DS. I&#39;m sure the final game will be a little more interesting. If it isn&#39;t, oh well, I&#39;ll be busy playing Pac-Pix.

To Mies, I agree with your assessment, but you should know that the processing power of the DS has never been announced. All Nintendo has officially said is that there are two processors: an ARM9 and an ARM7 (A version of the ARM7 currently powers the GBA). Also, developer friendliness isn&#39;t always a huge player, both Gamecube and Xbox are extremely developer friendly and the PS2 isn&#39;t. Which one gets more exclusive 3rd party games though?

oh... about the battery life...

sony said it would be 2 hours if it was streaming from the disk the whole time...

like gta or ssx3...

but i think they upped the ram of the psp quite a bit if i remember....

so it might have a solid 10 hours... most of the time..

They upped the RAM becuase it didn&#39;t have enough ram for developers to work successfully off it. it would have been like Doom 3 playing off 64MB RAM, it just wouldn&#39;t have worked. The games themselves are over 1 GB in memory so it just isn&#39;t feasible to have it running off system memory. Either way, you&#39;d still have a sgnificant amount of disc spinning. I can see the PSP getting maybe 5 hours (playing games) in optimal conditons but not any longer. It would have been nice if Sony had at least thought about just developing a better cartridge than Nintendo and going with that. It will be an interesting battle for the handheld market anyway.

Originally posted by Elite666@Aug 4 2004, 04:44 AM
Angelic, I&#39;d realy love to agree with you but, when Sony came in and stole the market from Nintendo, they had no real experience with games whatsoever. Of course Nintendo was making a huge mistake of sticking with cartridges then, whereas the cartridge medium they&#39;re using with the DS makes sense and I don&#39;t see any flaws quite as glaring as the ones they made with N64.

That was different then. Sony with their superior advertising experience had pushed a very strong campaign that gave an image of PS as "gaming for the whole family" whereas nintendo&#39;s advertisements were not really active and mostly put in magazines, relying on their strong core supporters who&#39;ve been playing nintendo all their life. The lack of publicity, and high costs of cartridge, put them behind Sony, whose name is familiar even to the most un-gamerlike of the people. Add Square moving over to Sony(and off goes every RPG lover), and it really finished nintendo for good.

Now that the situation is different, DS and PSP are pretty much on even grounds, I expect to see hell of a fight. Might be interesting to see who wins.

Probably, most people would get both of them, the software will determine the success.

sony still has a massively superior advertising advantage...

but i do expect the ds to suceed.......

just from past examples of countless handheld systems failing under the game boy....

but i think that the dualscreen is almost useless and the touch screen is nothing new....

i think nintendo is betting on a very high risk/low gain gamble...

as for software... if the psp can get the some of games finished and out with the psp i think it has a better line up..

im just afraid that the devolpers aren&#39;t going to finish in time... resulting a n64 style system launch..

like only 2 games....

Well, Square-Enix is developingsome games for SP and I can&#39;t see any reason why Camelot and Intelligent Systems won&#39;t have a go on the system as well so RPG&#39;s shouldn&#39;t be a problem. Unfortunately, as is always the case with Nintendo, there doesn&#39;t appear to be much planned for advertising. Nintendo has proven to be brilliant promoters of the GBA with the string of current ads with the guy in the street with game things swirling around him, some of the best print ads around when the SP ame out and of course the brilliant Golden Sun ad with an epic battle between gargoyles and violinists all done to the tune of the Peer Gynt Suite.

On the Gamecube however, their track record has been hit and miss. It started out with those extremely slick people in glass cubes ads but quickly went downhill from there. There have only been a few examples of worthwhile advertising done by Nintendo recently. The only ad that sticks in my mind as good is the MK:DD one where the grandma is throwing luggage. They&#39;ve even ruined a few excellent ads in the editing stages. Does anyone remember the Wind Waker ad. The original ad was moody, interesting, mysterious and ver fairy-tale like. You can see it here. (http://www.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_legendofzelda_ww_mv.html) For the final commercial, they ruined it by getting the movie voice over guy to do it. Oh, and I think you mean PS2 style launch, it launched with what, Fantavision? At least N64 had Super Mario 64.

Edit: Just saw Ling&#39;s post, I don&#39;t htink there&#39;ll be much worry of Sony beating them to lauch. DS is looking at launching this year whereas Sony is looking at well into next year. Since the PSP wasn&#39;t even playable at E3 that makes sense. Maybe the touchscreen isn&#39;t all that new (the tapwave Zodiac just came out and it&#39;s the first game system with a touch screen) but the ideas the developers are using for the touchscreen are. Just look at Pac Pix, when have you ever been able to draw your character and then use it to defeat enemies. Draw one big Pac-man or lots of little Pac-men. Some of th DS game ideas are extremely innovative and most of that&#39;s due to the touchscreeen. I agree that the dualscreen may be useless, but with the touchscreen you would need it for some games (You don&#39;t want your primary view covered up by your hands).

Nintendo still doesn&#39;t feel a great game (or system) needs even better advertising and this is holding them back. Sony may make very few worthwhile games, in fact they make very few games period, but they know how to market. Nintendo&#39;s showing that they&#39;re taking steps in the right direction but the DS is supposed to be out in less than five months, the commercials should already be starting.

ok we&#39;re getting a little bit off topic, so let&#39;s start steering back.
If you had just enough cash for PSP or DS but not both, which one would you buy? (if you had to buy one now)
As for me, I&#39;ve given up handheld, seeing very small need for it. If any great game comes out and if I really want to play, it&#39;ll be on emulator =_=

DS, I just can&#39;t bring myself to use an emulator for anything that&#39;s avaiable and an emulator won&#39;t work well, you&#39;re kind of sans touchscreen. Besides, my fist system in any generation is the one that will have Zelda and Metroid on it. The second consideration is whatever system Silicon Knights will be making games for. Oh and if you had enough cash for PSP, go for the DS and three games.

Angelic, I&#39;d realy love to agree with you but, when Sony came in and stole the market from Nintendo, they had no real experience with games whatsoever. Of course Nintendo was making a huge mistake of sticking with cartridges then, whereas the cartridge medium they&#39;re using with the DS makes sense and I don&#39;t see any flaws quite as glaring as the ones they made with N64.

No good comparisation, Nintendo had to fight off the PSX with their SNES, the N64 came much later. Fighting a 32-bit system with a 16-bit system is not really easy though. By the way, Sony and Nintendo worked together for a while on a new system, the idea is dropped and suddenly there is Sony with a Playstation. No experience?

Oh, I have no doubt they learned something from Nintendo in the planning stages of the Nintendo system but it really didn&#39;t help them alll that much. If it wasn&#39;t for Square, I think Nintendo would have even had a shot at winning that generation. After all, did you sit up and notice Playstation until FFVII came out. If it wasn&#39;t for the amazing ad campaign for FFVII and its huge sales Sony wouldn&#39;t have been doing all that hot. In the end it wasn&#39;t Sony&#39;s game abilities that made the console a success, it was Sony&#39;s marketing abilities. They stilll have little to no actual game making experience. The only first party game that&#39;s worthwhile is Gran Tourismo.

Thinking of it again, Nintendo really made so many mistakes in that generation though. They cut third party ties (which were already tenuous) because they felt a dream team of second party developers would do the job. Basically, they became extremely arrogant and greedy.

It&#39;s almost as if Sony only won that generation because of Nintendo&#39;s incompetence instead of their own abilities.

When talking about incompetence, let&#39;s start about Sega. The Dreamcast was a beatiful system and I still hate myself for not playing on it the one time I had the change of doing so one week ago. Anyway, Sega completely screwed that up because they had to fuck up the marketing of the thing.

Just like Capcom and the Megaman series . . . =_= . . . As I nearly only play Capcom and Square games, I guess I don&#39;t have much of a choice . . .

That&#39;s something we can totally agree on. I don&#39;t think it was just marketing incompetence, they were still doing better than Nintendo at the time. But really, did they think anyone was going to go out and buy the successor to the Saturn. No one liked the Saturn. The sad story here is that the Dreamcast did such great things with online and almost everyone, myself included, completely ignored it. Perhaps even worse is Sega&#39;s current state where it not so much a powerful company as a few seperate companies that like to believe they&#39;re united under one name. I can&#39;t believe they lost so badly in the merger with Sammy, something like 28% of every Sammy-Sega share for every Sega share you owned while every Sammy share is a 1:1 ratio.

if u add the memory stick u need for the psp..

then it&#39;d be 2 ds&#39;s... plus the 3 games..

.....

sega is just a sad story...

so sad..

i loved the genesis too....

Lol, good point. Yeah, the Genesis was awesome, you should try and track down a Game Gear 2. It allowed you to play Genesis games on a handheld.

I was extremely lucky, a friend of mine gave me a Genesis and thirty games completely free. Now I have two Genesisses (Genesissi?) and thirty four unique games, not to mention 5 or 6 copies,

Don&#39;t forget that the DS is also back compatible with all GBA games (unfortunately not GB and GBC). So if you don&#39;t own a GBA it will almost be worth it regardless.

http://kiosk.nfshost.com/articles/DSvPSP.htm

i found this extremely funny..

even though some of its facts were a bit off...

my md player runs on laser and i drop it all the time...

it has no probs..

But music needs a less accurate signal than data. Make the laser skip while reading a data disk makes the thing crash most likely. Next to that, the thing moves (the disc spins) and moving stuff is more likely to break than non-moving stuff (all hail cartridges). Also, cartridges consume far less power.

Minidisk does run off a different technology than nonwritable media but regardless I don&#39;t think Sony&#39;s stupid enough to make the PSP as breakable as the PS2.

If no one minds I&#39;d like to change the basic discussion over to that of the new DS look vs. the PSP look. I find the new DS design is just cool enough that it looks somewhat like a gadget, but still retains the comfort and durability of the GBA (not GBA SP that thing&#39;s hella uncomfortable). The PSP still looks far sleeker and sexier but that shiny plastic looks like it would be easily scratched and that would ruin the system&#39;s look in no time. I&#39;ve got the same sort of stuff on the detailing in my van and once it&#39;s scratched, it can&#39;t be polished out. Maybe they&#39;ll sell extra faceplates, much like cellphone faceplates.

Probaly a stupid question, but can the DS be having 64 games too, just ones upped to a valid DS cartridge? I love the 64, just as much as I PS2 or PS. My loyalty goes first to Nintendo, then to Playstation, so I would by the DS first. Aside from that I personally like cartridges better than CD&#39;s. They are more durable and don&#39;t scratch as easily. Finally, money is a factor, and battery life. Though the idea of near PS2 graphics on the PSP sounds pretty neat.

I don&#39;t thik there will be many ports of N64 games since the controls just wouldn&#39;t work. Any port that was made would be too much trouble for its worth since they&#39;d have to adapt it to the DS to justify it and reworking a game for two screens takes effort. N64 ports are more likely to show up on the successor to GBA which is still many years away. It&#39;s more likely that some games will use the N64 as a backbone and work off that like Mario 64x4.

The main reason why I&#39;m fond of cartridges is that I hate load time and loading screens. That was one of the biggest draws to Gamecube and why I just can&#39;t stand playing most games on the PS2. I&#39;m glad the N64 stuck with cartridges for that reason and that reason alone. However, in a portable the extra durability and the low power consumption is a definite plus as well.

theirs always the boot loader (don&#39;t remember the title) for the ps 2. It decreased the load time by about 40% in reviews.. And for x-box, well; the dark side is a good choice as well (mod chip). As for gamecube: throw it against the wall, use is as a paper-weight; just until the new legend of zelda come out...

I&#39;m not sure why you&#39;re dumping on Gamecube. It doesn&#39;t have any load times at all in the first party games and the load times on third party games are shortest on Gamecube. That&#39;s also without any modification. Either way this topic is about the DS so load times on the current consoles are kind of irrelevant.

^very true; (I just don&#39;t like the GC, no reason at all)

But I do think their will be ports, no matter how hard the control schemes will be, of their more popular games (paper mario, mario kart, legend of zelda, exc...)

They&#39;re making a new Mario Kart so it isn&#39;t likely they&#39;ll be bringing a port to the system as well. They just brought out Majora&#39;s Mask and Ocarina of time for the Gamecube (as a bonus game, not as a retail port) so those aren&#39;t likely to be ported. I think they aren&#39;t stupid enough to succumb to the quick buck of ports for the DS for three reasons.

1) The controls just won&#39;t work. It isn&#39;t that they&#39;d be difficult, they just wouldn&#39;t work. The DS only has as many buttons as the the SNES controller and it has a D-pad not an anologue stick. To see how this would work, download an N64 emulator and a rom of either Mario 64 or Zelda: Oot. Configure it to play with two shoulder buttons and four face buttons and use the arrow keys. Does it work? No.

2) If Nintendo doesn&#39;t innovate with their software on the DS, they will lose a significant part of the handheld market. They&#39;re trying to market two handheld systems and if the consumer public sees the DS as redundant then it just won&#39;t be bought.

3) Nintendo&#39;s planning on making loads of money on N64 ports with the successor to the GBA. They aren&#39;t going to try it now when the memories of the N64 are still somewhat fresh and they have to prove that their new handheld is a new way to play games.

Say what you will about Nintendo and their supposed "kiddy" image but they&#39;ve always been very shrewd and cutthroat in the industry and they aren&#39;t going to screw up in a market they own 99% of. Oh, and if you are going to argue against the Gamecube, make a new thread to do so in and I will gladly talk about it there but here isn&#39;t really the place.

^sorry.... I didn&#39;t realize you felt so passionately about the subject. I must me mistaken.

That&#39;s okay, I&#39;m sorry too. I know I can come off sounding like a bit of a Jackass.

if sony wins this nintendo is not lasting long...

hehe...

then it would just be microsoft and sony.....

ps4 n zbox.....

hahaha....

xbox... wut a joke...

When N64 first came out, I&#39;ve always dreamed that a handheld version would arrive. Now it seems like my wish will come true&#33; ^^ I can&#39;t wait to see what it&#39;s like, although I&#39;ll probably never buy it (no money + no time).

Hmm... what do you mean when you say if Sony wins? I&#39;m just wondering because there are several degrees of winning. If they just beat the DS then Nintendo will be in some trouble but if they beat the Gameboy too then that&#39;ll be the time that "Last Post (http://www.dva.gov.au/commem/commac/studies/LastPost.mp3)" rings out from Kyoto.

Originally posted by Alphonse@Aug 4 2004, 11:26 PM
When N64 first came out, I&#39;ve always dreamed that a handheld version would arrive. Now it seems like my wish will come true&#33; ^^ I can&#39;t wait to see what it&#39;s like, although I&#39;ll probably never buy it (no money + no time).
Same here. I myself have difficulty playing my GBA due to the graphics, but seeing something like N64 in my hands, that&#39;s just amazing. I&#39;m so eager&#33;

Originally posted by Elite666@Aug 5 2004, 03:35 PM
Hmm... what do you mean when you say if Sony wins? I&#39;m just wondering because there are several degrees of winning. If they just beat the DS then Nintendo will be in some trouble but if they beat the Gameboy too then that&#39;ll be the time that "Last Post (http://www.dva.gov.au/commem/commac/studies/LastPost.mp3)" rings out from Kyoto.
I&#39;d think thats about as likely as Xbox beating both PS2 and Gamecube in sales and popularity in the next 24 hours =_=

Yeah, I don&#39;t think Sony has the power to totally down Nintendo&#39;s handhelds and even if tehy did, Nintendo still turns a profit from Gamecube, not as much as GBA but a profit nonetheless. Can&#39;t forget about their multibillion dollar warchest either. I guess after 180 years of business they&#39;d be hard to get rid of.

At the moment, I&#39;m leanig towards the PSP, mainly because I think the DS is a terrible idea. I just don&#39;t think 2 screens is really necessary, and the touch screen stuff is even weirder. The PSP seems to be more of a normal handheld system ( a really powerful normal handheld system ;) ). I don&#39;t wanna have to look from screen to screen with the DS, let alone touch them. Thats just too much work. ^_^
and I love how huge the PSP&#39;s screen is. it takes up like, 4/5 of the system.

and as for the PSP&#39;s battery life, if I remember corectly, it&#39;s 10 hours for games, 8 hours for MP3 play, and 2 hours for DVD quality movies. I think you guys got it mixed up.

I can&#39;t imagine MP3 playback using much battery; low disk usage and low resource usage.

Just to elaborate on Angelics point, how do you think MP3 playback would take up more power than games? Sony said the system&#39;s battery life would be 2-10 hours. To my thinking, that means 10 hours if you have it on doing nothing, 7-8 hours MP3 playback (depending on the volume), the 2 hours of movie playback (which isn&#39;t enough time to watch some movies) and 2-5 hours for gameplay. The gameplay takes so much power for two reasons: it constantly needs to load from the disk hence laser usage and spinning and playing a game will take up the maximum amount of processing power. It won&#39;t need to read data as much as a movie but with the added load of having to work it isn&#39;t likely that many games will get more than 5 hours of battery time.

Oh, and Sony are lying bastards. They have a track record of it so I wouldn&#39;t believe too much of what they say about processing power or battery life.

Edit: Just found out that the DS is launching in November in the US and December in Japan. It&#39;s official, it was just put in a Nintendo press release.

(for the record, i&#39;m too tired to read most of the previous posts...lol)

Ok, i think the PSP will fail miserably, but i somewhat think the same for DS. It was stated by Nintendo that DS is just being released to compete w/ PSP and there will definately be the release of a new gameboy system within a year or two.

So, nintendo is putting out DS just to hurt sales of PSP? how dickish...lol, i guess it makes sense from a business aspect, but Nintendo has been the Mack Daddy of the handheld world for 15 years and somehow i doubt that is gonna change very soon...

nuff&#39; said...w/ a smile :)

Actually, it was stated that the DS was never meant to even compete directly with the PSP. Nintendo says they feel the systems are different and the DS is a totally new market. It&#39;s a very naive approach, and one I don&#39;t believe is their actual one, but I do think the DS would have come out regardless of the PSP launch. Maybe just in a year or two.

Oh, and I wouldn&#39;t think there will definitley be any sort of a new Gameboy launch for a while. The GBA SP is selling amazingly and it was 10 years before the original Gameboy got a new successor. Nintendo has always waited until the technology is fully there to evolve the Gameboy and it really isn&#39;t there yet. The PSP is making major concessions to achieve what they say it achieves.

Originally posted by Elite666@Aug 5 2004, 12:19 PM
Say what you will about Nintendo and their supposed "kiddy" image ...
Kiddy image? They own the rights to the canon Resident Evil games. Resident Evil 0 AND Resident Evil 4 are both Gamecube Exclusives. I doubt anyone would find these games kiddish, especially with the fact they are both MA+ games.

Nintendo, do seem to provide much more for a younger audience. Nintendo I feel, never hold back on quality, and I can say with certainty, I am not at all unexcited for the NDS.

I totally agree with the fact that Nintendo&#39;s kiddy image is mostly undeserved now. However, you can&#39;t argue that they aren&#39;t viewed as somewhat "kiddy" by the mainstream audience and that was all I&#39;m saying.

Actually, they own nothing of Resident Evil. Capcom has said that Resident Evil is now exclusive to Gamecube but Resident Evil is still wholly owned by Capcom. It hasn&#39;t even been confirmed that REsident Evil will be exclusive to Nintendo after RE4. If you want more non-kiddy titles from Nintendo check out Eternal Darkness, a Nintendo published game that is even rated "M". Luckily it also is oneof the best games for any system this generation.

As an interesting sidenote, further dispelling Nintendo&#39;s kiddy image, in BMX XXX the PS2 version was censored while the Gamecube version wasn&#39;t.

Belive me, I&#39;m a diehard Nintendo fan, I&#39;m just not blind to the numerous mistakes that they&#39;ve made. I am also extremely excited about the Nintendo Revolution (as is its official codename) and I will continue to buy every single Nintendo system as long as they keep the quality of their games up. I just can&#39;t live without Zelda or Metroid.

Originally posted by Elite666@Aug 7 2004, 05:09 PM
Actually, they own nothing of Resident Evil. Capcom has said that Resident Evil is now exclusive to Gamecube but Resident Evil is still wholly owned by Capcom. It hasn&#39;t even been confirmed that REsident Evil will be exclusive to Nintendo after RE4.
Thats actually what I was insinuating. Resident Evil: Outbreak and Resident Evil: Dead Aim are both on Playstation 2. They do not add to the story at all, and rather conflict with the series plot lines. They are considered slightly un-canon. But thanks for clearing it up.

You seem very passionate about Nintendo. It&#39;s nice to see they still have loyal fans as yourself.

On the upside with those titles, I heard they sucked. Well, I heard Dead Aim sucked; I&#39;m still waiting for the first level of Outbreak to load. :D

Resident Evil 4 does look truly awesome though, doesn&#39;t it?

Haha. I don&#39;t mind Dead Aim. Controls take a bit of getting used to but I had the character you play as. He looks awful. The dialogue in the game is also very soft, and you can&#39;t turn it up at all. But it&#39;s definetly a step up on the Survivor Seres. Outbreak isn&#39;t even OUT here yet, and when it is it WON&#39;T be online, which sucks.

Resident Evil 4 looks amazing. It just proves to the world what out little Gamecube buddy can do. I still reckon Resident Evil REmake is one of the best looking game ever.

Maybe we should open up a Gamecube thread, this is getting a little off-topic.

*Goes to make a Gamecube thread*

Edit: It&#39;s done.

Dang, after reading the links that Elite666 posted on the first page of this thread, I guess my brother will have to get the PSP.

The DS is mine. :ph34r:

On the other hand, maybe I should try to get him to buy the DS. We&#39;ve been wanting to try out the Four Sword game from Zelda for so long, after all.

I can&#39;t wait to see the new Tengai Makyou series on the DS. I hope Hudson can maintain the quality, if not make it better. XD I guess I like the original game too much.

i see the ds failing.......

and the psp failing...

but i see sony pushing the psp and keeping it alive anyway...

then psp has a long lifespan with no competition for around 2~3 years waiting for the next gameboy to come out....

im sorry, but i see nintendo as a failing company with no future...

its not a personal thing, but i really doubt that nintendo is going to be able to keep up with microsoft and sony in the console market, and the hand held market isn&#39;t going to be enough to support everything....

Yes, I&#39;m sure Nintendo will die. It&#39;s not like they&#39;ve successfully been profitable for every single quarter except one since they became publically traded. It also isn&#39;t that it&#39;s a 180 year old company with over 20 years of experience in the game market. It can&#39;t be thta they&#39;re the company that single-handedly ressurected the console market after the crash in the early 80&#39;s. Why I&#39;ll bet that the fact that they&#39;ve held on to the handheld market against many competitors (most of which had far more advanced systems) even means nothing. I think that their huge multibillion dollar warchest won&#39;t keep them alive at all.

I realize sarcasm doesn&#39;t travel well on the internet but I thik I made it painfully obvious.

.

Yes Obi-wan. :D

I still think there should be a specific sarcasm font though, it would make things easier.

Anyway, getting this thread back on topic a fairly complete list of DS games, including the Western Developers, can be found here. (http://www.planetgamecube.com/news.cfm?action=item&id=5505) The only company left to divulge most of their games is Nintendo themselves.

For anyone looking to get hands on time with the DS who lives in the States I&#39;d suggest checking out the Nintendo Fusion Tour. (http://www.planetgamecube.com/news.cfm?action=item&id=5511) I hope they come out with something like this for Canada.

Edit: If you&#39;re up for a long read then this speech (http://gameboy.ign.com/articles/538/538040p1.html) is worth checking out. It gives you an idea of what Nintendo has planned and what their thinking is behind the DS. It also mentions that there is an actual possibility of the wireless internet function being used so that&#39;s nice to know.

NINTENDO SHALL NEVER DIE&#33;&#33;&#33; (Not sarcasm) Just look at the poll I put up about your favorite company&#33; Oh and the sarcasm font wouldn&#39;t work cuz people would use it mad crazy and it would lose all meaning. But... back on subject. GO NINTENDO&#33;&#33;&#33; :D

i just want to say what i think:

until recently i thought that psp was gonna out do DS. Sony has an enormous budget it can buy licenses for exclusives,the psp looked cool and it had a whole lot of great RPG producers on its side so i was for psp (but i was still a nintendo fan)

however,the wind changed. i got this info from a game magazine:the name nintendo DS is staying (though i liked GB better), itll cost &#036;180 in the US and &#036;170 in Japan, and (Fanfare&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;) they changed the look. Now its sleek and shiny and awesome so all the the arguments about psp being cooler fade... and, SquareEnix announced that it will support DS with (&#33;&#33;) FF,DragonQuest,MegaMan and more brands. So the most important reason for getting psp (rpgs) fades and thus psp will lose i think since nintendo can make better games than sony in all other genres..

YAY&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33; Nintendo DS rules&#33;&#33;&#33;

Don&#39;t despair about the loss of Gameboy. Nintendo says that they&#39;re still planning on keeping the Gameboy brand going (and there won&#39;t be a lack of GBA software support) and the DS is a third platform, not a successor to the Gameboy.

huh? thats kinda stupid:having two portable systems compete with each other (nintendo DS and Game Boy Revolution)

means double the profits :D

They aren&#39;t really competing, think of it more as co-existing. The GBA already has a startlingly huge user base so Nintendo would be stupid not to continue to sell new GBA games. Also, although the DS will be priced better than the PSP it will be more expensive and appeal to a different demographic. Lastly, Nintendo may be planning a &#036;20 price drop on the GBA SP which would make it certain. Which machine will a mom looking for a Christmas present buy, the &#036;80 one that looks like a cool toy or the &#036;179 one that looks like a high-tech gadget? Nintendo isn&#39;t trying to split the handheld market, they&#39;re trying to expand it.

does anybody know if nintendo is dumping the kiddy image for nintendo DS games?cause if it isnt older gamers like 16+ might switch to psp

If the new design of the DS is anything to judge by then they&#39;re very interested in not seeming to appeal to a younger crowd but if you&#39;re looking for a Nintendo system that won&#39;t have Mario, Metorid or Zelda you&#39;re looking in the wrong place. I don&#39;t really consider Nintendo &#39;kiddy&#39; either. They do make many games that appeal to a broad audience but I can&#39;t in good concience call a system that has Resident Evil exclusive to it &#39;kiddy&#39;.

yeah but THQ (a good game creater) said that "soon they were gonna release a Nickelodian game on GBA-i mean,mature gamers wont buy this... Mario Zelda Metroid DK arent kiddy games,theyre the logo of nintendo... i just want companies to stop assuming that DS will be for small kids so we shouldnt realese good mature games on it :(

.

Actually, THQ is really mainly a publisher. They just tend to publish a lot of licensed games which means they tend to publish a lot of crap games.

Anyway, I don&#39;t think the DS will attract the same amount of licenced games and crap. The reason that the GBA has so many bad games on it is because it has a huge user base and development costs are far cheaper than home console games. This tends to attract games that never aspire to be good, just to make a quick buck. It would be hard to justify the same sort of gimmick on the DS since there will be a large amount of original, innovative games right away. Why would you buy "Barbie&#39;s craptacular adventure 3" when there are at least 20 good titles to choose from. Also, the demographic will be different. The gadget loving crowd won&#39;t buy a crappy kid game in the same way a mother who has to buy her son a Christmas present but knows nothing about games will.

i still cant believe theyre gonna make a new GB... thats stupid.one good reason why they should do this,please?i mean then there are gonna be 3 portable systems competing&#33;&#33;

.

Originally posted by alone@Sep 4 2004, 06:03 AM
i still cant believe theyre gonna make a new GB... thats stupid.one good reason why they should do this,please?i mean then there are gonna be 3 portable systems competing&#33;&#33;
Think of it like this, there are people like me who don&#39;t like 32 bit graphics much, but having over 64 bit graphics hand held....that would be just amazing. They do it for graphics. I would like to play games like Mario Kart and such with good graphics hand held and be able to appreciate the beauty.

And the idea is for it NOT to be a GB, but something completely different.

right now there are two portable systems:psp and nintendo DS,all of which are great and powerful.However nintendo said that theyre not abondoning GB and a succesor could come out (lets call it Game Boy II).i just dont understand why cant they make DS the succesor.or maybe they want to have DS as an innovation system and create GBII as the standard competitor of psp,using DS in a team with Revolutions

Well, if Nintendo created a GBAII to come out at the same time as PSP then that would create a lot of consumer mistrust. They already came out with a new Gameboy just over a year ago. I don&#39;t know about you but I like my systems to last more than 2 years.

Also, the Gameboy hardware will continue to be the cheaper, less powerful, more standard gaming system. It would be hard to just do a normal game on the DS and sell it becaue it&#39;s avoiding using so much potential. I doubt Nintendo wants to cut themselves off further from the third party development scene any more and stopping creating normal systems is a damn fine way of doing that. Look at it as the Gameboy continuing to defend it&#39;s market and the DS expanding the portable market. I think there&#39;s room for three systems.

I think the GBA is completely out of the league of the DS and PSP.. I think the GBA is a perfect device for beginning and casual gamers, while the PSP and DS will be aimed at the more hardcore gamers.

Granny will sooner buy her grandchildren a GBA instead of a PSP or a DS simply because it&#39;s much cheaper.

Perhaps this topic title should be changed to "The Best Portable System" or something, as I&#39;ve noticed its hard to talk about DS without comparing to the PSP, and...well, yeah. Or we can just talk about it anyways regardless of the title...

good link for nintendo info (http://www.nintelligent.net)

nintendo has announced 153 games for DS... so far i can remember namco and koei who are really good with jrpg oh and Rare will NOT support DS

p.s. psp has about the same number of games announced, however, many experts are doubting that it will come out in time.Most think that it will be released in USA no earlier than spring 2005

sweet... they changed the shape and design of the DS and it looks better than ever...

**looking for a link to show but cant find right now**

info (http://www.nintelligent.net/news2180.php)


great price and i think its cool to include that picture draw.it would be awesome to draw things and send them even to people in different countries :)

a way for forum members to chat offline

I also like how they&#39;re packaging in the demo for MP Hunters. It shows they&#39;re at least trying for the older gadget audience.

i think the Pictochat is just awesome...

let me use the space to say that even more people now suspect that the release of psp will be postponed. This is backed up by the facts that sony recently began searching for programers specialising on... something to do with psp and that the price hasnt been announced

ha-ha

.

Kind of offtopic indeed, but amusing :lol:

i think Sony is definitely gonna lose the portable market fight ^_^

edit:did you guys see the screens for egg monster hero theyre great

new screens (http://www.gamespot.com/ds/action/eggmonsterhero/screenindex.html)

Split a bunch of posts from this thread >.>; now no more PSP here please.

Something that has me very interested in the DS is that Nintendo seems to be marketing it well. They&#39;ve decided to stick with a significantly more adult image and they&#39;re commiting large amounts of money to advertising. The link below show the first run of teaser commercials:

Touching is good. (http://www.nintendo.com/newsarticle?articleid=62c5e8ca-165e-4259-a391-844b3ca8cdab&page=other)

.

Official Nintendo DS site (http://www.nintendods.com/)

Today I was able to get some actual hands-on experience with the DS and I came away very impressed.

I think the first thing I should talk about is the actual unit itself. It&#39;s far smaller than I expected and was comfortable in every position I tried. The weighting on it was also very good and I had no trouble holding it in one hand and banging on the touchscreen with the other. Also, the speakers seem to be far higher quality than the GBA and can reproduce sound effects well. The whole thing felt durable and responsive. It looked very slick but I think I&#39;ll be waiting for a colour other than platinum before I buy mine. The screens were a good size and even under fluorescent lighting were easily visible. All in all I was very impressed with the system itself.

I didn&#39;t really get a feel for the games since I only had limited playtime with MP: Hunters and only the single player at that. There is one thing I think I can accurately judge and that&#39;s the graphics. This game is beautiful. It isn&#39;t quite as pretty as the Gamecube version but if this is a firt generation title for the DS I don&#39;t think developers will have any problem creating exceptional graphics in the future.

Next week I&#39;ll be heading out to a much larger event where I should be able to try out more games and get a feel for the mulitplayer so I&#39;ll have more impressions then.

.

Well, MP: Hunters was set up fully for left-handed control as well. The a,b,x,y layout feels enough like a d-pad that there shouldn&#39;t be any problem whatsoever. Also, considering how easy it is to include a second control optio that maps the directions for a left-handed person there really isn&#39;t any reason not to avoid it.

how were you able to try nintendo DS?

In Canada there&#39;s a tour that is coming around and showcasing specific Nintendo games.

Here (http://www.nintendo.ca/cgi-bin/usersite/display_info.cgi?lang=en&pageNum=7&id=6855414) is the site.

Also, in the US demo kiosks should start appearing soon.

I had a much more extended playtime with the DS today and I came away with an even better feeling since I was able to experience more of its features. Unlike my first experience with the DS, I was able to examine the system&#39;s startup and built-in functions. The first thing I noticed was how much more gadget like the DS is than the Gameboy. When you start off you press the touchscreen and instead of going to the game you have inserted you go to a small OS where you are able to set up the clock and choose to use picto-chat, download game data or play the game that&#39;s in the cartdridge slot. The whole process was very intuitive and fast so it did&#39;t conflict with portablility.

First I played some actual multiplayer MP: Hunters and now I&#39;m excited. As I mentioned last time the game is beautiful. It seemed even moreso today and it was never hard to see the screens. I&#39;ve now tried out all three different control schemes (there are five but two of them are just mirrir images of others set up for left-handed people) and I found the default one where you look with the touchscreen and shoot with a shoulder button to be the most intuitive. The control scheme that didn&#39;t use the touchscreen for anything other than weapon selection and morphball transformation was good but seemed far less responsive. It felt like playing Goldeneye after playing a contemporary dual analog game. The E3 controls are by far the worst since shooting, aiming and looking are mapped to the touchscreen. They weren&#39;t horrible but I can&#39;t see why anyone would prefer them.

The game was quite fun and the wireless LAN was painless to set up. I merely chose create game and then my friend chose join game. That was it. We were up playing as right away and although we didn&#39;t play for a very long time it seems obvious that it&#39;s fairly deeo and a lot of fun. I&#39;m looking forward to seeing what the finished product is like next year.

After MP: Hunters I fooled around with Picto-chat for a while. Perrin Kapplan has said that Nintendo is counting down the days until the DS is banned in schools and looking at picto-chat they&#39;re right to. At first it was just thetransfer of crudely written notes but soon we realized we could communicate through pictures. First we started with little doodles but soon we were having a great time supplementing our conversation with personalized emoticons and more. I can&#39;t stress how enjoyable it was to use picto-chat and although it doesn&#39;t seem like a highly advanced program it&#39;s built in and has the power to become a huge phenomenon.

All in all I&#39;ve walked away very impressed with the DS system and the ideas behind it. Unfortuantely, I&#39;ve only really played one game so I can&#39;t judge the library at all but Hopefully that will change.

Edit: I&#39;m very sorry for the double post.

I got a DS and I think it is very good. Although, there are a few problems I have with the design. First of all, the buttons were way too small and close toghether, it made me so mad when I was at the top of the level and I accidently hit the wrong button and fell. Another problem is that it is a little too bulky, I think they could have cut it down a bit. All in all it&#39;s good, and I can&#39;t wait too see what they do with the touch-screen.

Mario 64 DS is an awesome game. It&#39;s pretty much mario 64 but more levels, more characters, and fun little mini games. I really enjoy this game.

Metroid Prime: Hunters First Hunt was ok. The touch-screen controls are pretty cool but can get kind of annoying after a while. This game is ok, but I will be looking for alot more in the finished version.

and that&#39;s my 2cents

I don&#39;t have one yet but it looks really good. I like the buttons that squish down when you press them; not the clicking kind... At first the dual screens seemed really pointless but it&#39;s actually really cool. I don&#39;t dislike the bulkyness. It feels kinda good in your hands. I was cleaning my room the other day and in a pile of dust I found my old Nomad. Super bulky it is but I really liked how it felt in my hands&#33; They should make a handheld that&#39;s shaped like the cube&#39;s controller but has a "laptop" screen on it like SP. Two screens probably wouldn&#39;t fit but that&#39;s my idea&#33;

Hmm... A handheld based off the Gamecube controller would be kind of cool but it wouldn&#39;t ever work. It would be way to big to ever be considered portable. Imagine trying to fit one of those in your pocket.

.

Xenosaga announced for DS&#33; Yahooo&#33;&#33;&#33; go RPGs

dfslbsdfavbhvjfgjsklagfds&#33; xenosaga announced&#33; SWEET SHIZNIT&#33; I got a DS for my bday and man i must say i LOVE it. the demo is really really awsome and i soo want to bring my friends to a gamestop so we can play a big 3 played multiplayer&#33; I hope to expand my game library for it over christmas.....

xenosaga???

hopefully for psp too then...

both namco psp and ds divisions seems to be going all out..

*hopes*

news: DS sold out in 4 days in japan... sounds good

i think the PSP sounds like it will be better, but again it depends on what kind of games you like

when asked to coment the new PSP and DS, vice-president of Microsoft Peter Moore said something like this: "in my opinion trying to battle nintendo in the portable console market is equivalent of me building my own OS and trying to compete with Microsoft
XD
(he was probably refering to GB ability to win the battle against 6 different portable consoles, each of them surpasing the GB technically)

Actually, he was referring to the PSP trying to take over a market that&#39;s owned 99% by Nintendo. Nintendo&#39;s stranglehold on the portable market is even stronger than Microsft&#39;s own on the OS market.

Heh, I&#39;ve purchased the Japanese version of the D.S., and it apparently has more language features then the U.S. verion. Its better in a way because it can play U.S. games, or games from Japan, just about anywhere, for the most part. Can&#39;t wait till I get it :)

99%? id say it was a bit less - 95% with Wonder Swan and Gizmondo

There&#39;s also Neo-Geo pocket, N-Gage and the Zodiac but none of those make any sort of a significant dent in Nintendo&#39;s market share. Of all the current handheld systems then Nintendo has 98% minimum market share and probably 99% overall. This isn&#39;t counting the launch of the PSP since numbers haven&#39;t really come back about that.

Bloody DS.. all I can say is.. "we need bigger and better screens to match the quality of the graphics"

as far as chat rooms, how far can the DS reach?

The Bluetooth wireless works well for about 100 foot radius. The WiFi is supposed to work farther but I don&#39;t think that&#39;s supported yet.

:offtopic:

A bit info on Sony:

1) there is a helluva shortage on the modified PS2 and PSP. Apparently Sony seems to be incapable of producing two consoles at the same time. However, this may work to sony&#39;s advantage: with few psp available, the demand for them will grow

2)Sony comented the psp. Basically sony is being very cautious. Since now the price of 1 console is lower than the Average Cost of production, they are afraid of producing a lot. Reason - they&#39;re still trying to figure out how the market is accepting the new portable console

3)Standard & Poor lowered sony&#39;s credit rating from A + to A (the credit rating reflects a companies ability to garante the return of the credit -> the higher the rating, the more willing will be banks/etc. to give this company a high credit). Sony&#39;s rating remained A+ from 1993&#33;&#33;&#33; One of the reasons why it was lowered is, of course, psp. Even though the public was very happy (and surprised) that the price was lowered to &#036;200, the investors are not&#33;&#33;&#33; With the current price, the most optimistic forecasts show that sony will start making profit only 3 years later. But if psp will not be such a success as sony supposed, then its gonna have very serious financial problems

^ interesting. No comment

Having got my DS and game, Super Mario 64 DS, I gave it a whirl. First thing I noticed was the nice graphics and such as the characters popped out. However, when it came time for me to Control my character, the controls were a bit clunky. You see, while you can use the stylis to move your character, that hinders your ability to press key buttons. And if you use the the control pad, you have to hold the left button on the right side of the DS to run, otherwise you end up in a slow walk.

This is irratating, because you need the right trigger to perform long jumps and stomps, and at the angle its hard to do. Thankfully the camera views were okay to use. I found myself getting frustrated trying to toggle the controls at times, and control my own character. Its frustrating, because its not as easy to use. Overall, though, I was happy. 8/10.

yeah, a lot of reviews mentioned the annoying controls in Mario

I played Metroid Prime Hunters on DS for about 10 minutes over the holidays . . I quickly adjusted to using the stylus and control pad, and I liked it a lot, even though it was a bit uncomfortable for my hand. I was surprised with the degree of control I was given, considering that it&#39;s a shooter game . . but that&#39;s just my two cents.

[EDIT - REMOVED] Wrong thread, sorry. =P