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Nintendo's Next Handheld - The Crazy Speculation Thread
TubularLuggage
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Now, we all know the DS is printing money, and is one of the fastest selling systems ever. Right now, it's apparently selling one unit in the US every 5 seconds. There's no doubting that Nintendo know exactly what they're doing with it.
It seems though, mainly in Japan, cellphone games are becoming more prominant. Unlike the shitty cellphone games we have here, they have things like Resident Evil 4, as well as a brand new Megaman title and a brand new sequel to FFIV coming out on cell phones.
Now, Nintendo's focus has always been on making game systems that are game systems, and it has paid off big time over the years, especially this generation. With the trend with cellphone games though, and phones like those possibly coming to North America by the next generation of systems, will Nintendo hop on board and give their next handheld phone functionality? If so, will it be optional? If not, will sticking with straightforward game machine strategy work again?
Discuss.
Also, feel free to speculate about what else they'll do.
It seems though, mainly in Japan, cellphone games are becoming more prominant. Unlike the shitty cellphone games we have here, they have things like Resident Evil 4, as well as a brand new Megaman title and a brand new sequel to FFIV coming out on cell phones.
Now, Nintendo's focus has always been on making game systems that are game systems, and it has paid off big time over the years, especially this generation. With the trend with cellphone games though, and phones like those possibly coming to North America by the next generation of systems, will Nintendo hop on board and give their next handheld phone functionality? If so, will it be optional? If not, will sticking with straightforward game machine strategy work again?
Discuss.
Also, feel free to speculate about what else they'll do.
TubularLuggage on
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Nothing they've done has suggested they'll go that route. It's more a question of looking at market trends in Japan, and Nintendo wanting to keep handheld dominance.
With cell-phone gaming apparently getting HUGE in Japan, it definitely seems to be one part of the games industry that Nintendo has yet to crack.
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No.... YOU'RE fooling yourself. Do you seriously think superior phone technology will magically keep itself out of the US forever? That's just crazy. We'll get it in a few years... it's just that we're late adopters for that sort of thing. I remember 7 or 8 years ago we were saying the same thing about camera phones.
Bingo. If there's no way to make it happen practically, Nintendo won't jump on it.
The next Nintendo handheld will just be a better looking DS I imagine.
I say its time for a Game Boy with a HUD sunglass thing and you have a wireless controller that goes with it.
Are you talking only about phones you've seen in the US? Or phones you've also seen in Asia?
The reason I ask is because phones there are always a few years ahead of what we have now. For all I know, Japanese phones have already cracked the problem of bad control devices. (Maybe that explains why cell-phone gaming is so huge there now)
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Edit: Seriously, I think it will be a bigger beefier DS. New features would be a joystick and probably tilt control.
I could see them getting into it though. I think they might try it honestly. They might have a brother or sister company interested in doing a combined project.
Solves any problems for controls and it could still be a cell phone, if Nintendo were so inclined..
Imagine a DS handheld that was an equally awesome cellphone.
That reminds me of this one mock up picture that showed a handheld with that many screens....if only I could find the picture.
The only real difference though will be a sensor bar above the touch-screen. The plastic nub will be an IR sensor and the stylus will have tiny motion-detecting technology in it. To keep it charged it'll be connected to the DS by a thin wire.
It might sound far-fetched now, but I mean, it'll be a good long while before the DS needs replacing.
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Just so that you can have one set of buttons for normal phone tasks, and another suited to game-ply or something.
Or, if it's going to just be an upgraded DS, then a higher resolution screen and maybe an analogue stick if that's necessary which I'm not sure of. But if there was a higher res screen as pretty much every consecutive Nintendo handheld has had, something would have to be done to make the older DS games work on the new screen; you couldn't just have a black border around each one like the DS does for GBA games. I suppose the easiest solution would be to have a border around the outer and side edges of each screen, but have the image pushed to the middle so there's no space wasted near the hinge where the two screens meet up.
Hope that made some sense :P
Edit: ^ Next gen gameboy is going to have 54 screens and you twist it around like a rubik's cube.
Regardless of what they do, they'll certainly focus on the gaming interface over cellphone crap, but having cellular internet in the next big handheld could be pretty nice for stuff like internet play.
Virtual Boy II?
This. If they ever go the cellphone route, I believe it will be an optional thing. Nintendo is extremely focused on its specific niche(making video games), so I'm fairly certain if they made this move, they'd ensure not to end up excluding those who only want video games and not a new cellphone.
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edit:
I'm betting on lenticular 3D OLED multi-touch screens.
Virtual Man.
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I expect the DS successor to be at least as accessible as the DS too, since nintendo have had a lot of success from making high quality, accessible devices and software.
Some form of Wii-esque functionality is pretty much a dead cert. I think it will have the same hardware functionality as the motion sensing in the sixaxis controller.
It will look teh sexy, or at least the SP/lite version of it will.
Built in memory? well, it's a feature that has been hinted at since the GBA first got the play-yan (is that the right name) SD card adapter. I wouldn't be too surprised if there was a gig or so of flash memory in the device, for music/video. If Nintendo decide to go down this route, my guess is that they would put an SD card slot in it somewhere too, but I wouldn't be too surprised if they are still very against the idea user putting their own data on the device. Nintendo acknowledged the R4 homebrew/piracy device recently, but I never even heard them mention the same thing for the GBA equivalent, maybe they realise that if they support some features of homebrew that there is less incentive for people to create these hardware/software hacks.
(ie, if the DS natively played videos off an SD card, there would be less reason for a homebrew media player)
It will print money.
But won't the first program for it be something to break out of restricted mode?
I dunno, if they did it like the PS3's version of linux, isn't it impossible (lol) to hack around it? Nintendo could just restrict the hardware when running stuff from card/memory.
I am sure it theoretically could be hacked, but I think it would be pretty fucking difficult, or require hardware modification to lead to piracy, and the big deal with piracy on the DS right now is that it doesn't require hardware modification, and doesn't void the warentee (so a lot of people who might not want to risk damaging hardware are turned off the idea)
I was more suggesting that they would just allow media to be played off SD cards, since this is one of the most useful features of homebrew right now. Maybe license an SDK for small, low budget (Wii-ware) like games, but not encouraging homebrew specifically.
Yes, even if they get over the technology problems, there's still infrastructure problems which would make it near impossible to implelent worldwide, without selling their souls to a half dozen different carriers
I think the big draw for cellphone games has to be more the buy when and how you wish right from your phone, download to your phone, and play. I think if Nintendo can incorporate good memory into their next handheld and come up with a good digital distribution method (lets think instead of Wifi) we can go the rought of mobile broadband. Mobile broadband is taking off in the US (think Sprint's PowerVision and upcomming mobile broadband services). Now then, lets say they have the handheld, they stuff it with 5gb of internal flash memory, its a great game console, and by making deals with wireless providers (say a precentage of the games downloaded through their network) you can be anywhere) download mobile content, check your mail, maybe browse the web (lets make this an opera type browser, mail checking through the browser) and you have something. I think you have pretty much everything but a cellphone...
heck , it may be possible to route some VoIP through such a device.
PSP is awesome, but I want something I can close. It's very satisfying.
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The next handheld aside from color will be a DSLite with some minor changes, but just enough so that you have to get one (because it's so awesome) but you'll also have to buy new carrying cases, stylii, screen protectors, headphones, etc ...
A clamshell design also protects the screens from being scratched or damaged more severely than that, something that Sony should have taken into account when making the PSP, I feel.