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Nintendo DSi, the new DS iteration. Larger screens, camera, SD slot, DLC focus.
gilrain
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Registered User regular
I was just wandering around some gaming news sites, and was surprised to see this. I usually get my news here in G&T, but I can't find a thread about it anywhere. I'll take the case!
Let me give you the quick breakdown.
And, like the NDS wasn't a replacement for the GBA, the DSi is currently not planned to replace the DS Lite. Yeah. :P
Below is a summary from Wired. I can't find an official press release, yet.
Let me give you the quick breakdown.
- Larger screens
- Two cameras
- SD card slot (might make homebrew even easier/better)
- Focus on downloadable games (region locked)
- Web browser
- Japanese release is Nov 1, international release is "2009."
- 18,900 yen, ~$185
And, like the NDS wasn't a replacement for the GBA, the DSi is currently not planned to replace the DS Lite. Yeah. :P
Below is a summary from Wired. I can't find an official press release, yet.
Wired wrote:Nintendo has just fired the latest salvo in the portable gaming wars.
Although the company's Nintendo DS Lite is still selling like gangbusters, even setting sales records, Nintendo said at a press conference Thursday that it will not wait for its popularity to wane. The Kyoto company will introduce a new model of its two-screened handheld, called Nintendo DSi, this November in Japan.
It's got bigger screens. It comes equipped with a small camera to take pictures. It can play music files. It can store all that content on an SD memory card. But most importantly, it's fully equipped for the digital distribution revolution. Just as Nintendo sells Wii games through its own direct-download store, so too will it begin selling Nintendo DS titles directly to consumers.
Some downloadable DSi software will be free, and some will be priced from $2 to $10, Nintendo said. The company is pursuing a gung-ho strategy to get DSi purchasers online with their handhelds and buying games -- it said it would give a free 1000 Nintendo Points (about $10 in online currency) to each DSi owner through the spring of 2010.
One of the first free applications that users can download from the DSi Shop is a web browser.
What the DSi is not is a brand-new gaming platform. It's a Nintendo DS with significant feature upgrades. While Nintendo has said that it will release software that is only playable on the DSi, it mostly just plays the same games as the current DS Lite.
So if you're not into the upgrades, you don't need to buy one.
There are actually two cameras on the device, one that faces outward (shown right) and one that faces inward, like a MacBook's camera. Nintendo says that the images the cameras snap are 300,000 pixels large, which works out to 640X480 resolution.
DSi can also play back audio, and you can alter the pitch and playback speed of the sound files you're playing.
An SD card slot sits on the right side of the machine, storing all the camera photos, music files, and games that you've added on to the system.
The DSi brings Nintendo's product offering closer to what rival Sony has with its PSP portable system, which has an optional camera attachment, robust media playback functionality, and can download games to Memory Stick media.
What it lacks is a Game Boy Advance game slot. So if you still want to play your old Pokemon games, you'll want to stick with the current DS Lite.
DSi will cost more than the DS Lite -- 18,900 yen, or about $185 -- and debut in Japan on November 1. Nintendo will release it outside Japan in 2009.
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I guess we can get the ball rolling by the news that the downloadable DSi software will be region locked. Commence bitching!
EDIT: I'm going to wait until the system launches in the U.S. next year before making up my mind on the system. On the one hand it seems like a pretty minimal physical upgrade, but on the other end since I now run all my PSP games off of a memory stick, the immense potential of having software on the internal memory or being able to swap out SD cards for software could be huge. It all depends on how robust the DSi Store ends up being, though. Even the PSP is still fairly slow with offering full games as downloads.
I am interested but in the store, but I'm waiting to hear how it'll work/what's going to be offered. 'Til then, well, it's another piece of hardware in the pipeline.
Yah I've been wondering this as well. If I imported a Japanese DSi, would I be able to access the store once the NA store launches? Or would I be out of luck?
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I kind of figured that the download stores would be region-locked, but it remains to be seen whether or not there will be any cart-based DSi exclusive games or software.
If this thing has 320x240 screens (or higher, I guess), I'm fucking sold.
(If it doesn't, though, don't count on downloadable Virtual Console for anything but old handheld games).
Its the same resolution just larger.
We aren't getting downloadable console games on it, then. Or, if we do, they'll use terrible-looking scaling.
I was sort of hoping for 640/480 myself, given the inside camera.
That would be nice, but prohibitively expensive, and would mean that DS games would need to get upscaled (again, terrible-looking).
This does seem like a test-bed of a variety of features for a full handheld successor.
Both.
3 megapixel camera on the outside, .3 megapixel camera on the inside hinge.
I don't think anything official has been said; Rumors on the Internets are that the outside camera is definitely only 0.3MP, and people are claiming the inside one is either 3MP or 0.3MP. The only thing Iwata said at the JP conference was:
Given the translation, it doesn't sound like the resolution is all that great, so I'd bank on only 0.3 MP, which is apparently 640x480 resolution but I'm not 100 percent sure.
BTW, here's the link to the full English translation of Iwata's JP conference.
EDIT: A slide!
So this is really just the DS-Not-As-Lite? No real change to the actual gaming hardware? If I get into playing DS again, this might get me to upgrade my DS Phat, but there'd have to be some pretty amazing new games for that to happen. I haven't picked mine up in over a year.
It just seems like a strange move for the DS audience, which is as a mainstream as you can get and will be confused because they can't drag their MP3 folders onto an SD card and get it to work, unless Nintendo offers some kind of auto-conversation software.
Right now the jury's out because we don't know how robust the DSi Store is going to be, but yes, this looks like a Game Boy Color/Micro situation: a boutique version of the handheld with some extra features and others removed.
Also, the SD slot kinda worries me. I'm sure they'll have safeguards in place, but I can't help think that's going to be a pretty easy door in for homebrew. Which isn't bad in itself, but that does lead to opening the door to piracy. It's already rediculously easy to pirate WiiWare games with nothing more than an SD card. I can't help think that putting one on the DS is just going to lead to the same thing.
Then again, I guess it's already easy enough with that R-5 or whatever that thing is called for the DS. So I dunno...
I agree on the Micro though, still pissed that they cut GBC support from that. Still an awesome gadget to have though, it's so tiny! The iPod Nano of videogame systems.
In a manner of speaking, yes.
Seriously, having something like Brain Age on the DSi's internal memory is a really awesome idea. I'd love to have something like that or Picross always sitting in memory and available to be picked at for five or 10 minutes. And if future DS games were ever offered up simultaneously for either retail purchase or DSi download, it could be an interesting tack into territory that the PSP and iPhone are already wading into.
Strangely enough, I have a Micro that hasn't gotten much use since I bought a Lite, but if I were ever to sell off the Lite and pick up a DSi, the Micro would be perfect to keep around for GBA games.
I can't wait for Fox News to get a hold of this line.
Surely this device was designed to corrupt the youth of America, by urging them to photograph each other during acts of "friendship" - yeah, Nintendo, we know what you really meant, "group sex" - and then using this diabolic device's built-in wireless connectivity, share them with other children. The touch-screen and intuitive paint program even allows them to scrawl lewd communication on the images and send them back! Nintendo is responsible for the upswing in teen pregnancies.
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I submit that with the plethora of awesome GBA games, it's hard to beat a GBM in the "Videogame Fun per cubic inch" metric.
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The DS can do that, too, so it's a moot point to bring up.
I'll probably just get another DS Lite. The GBA slot just seals the deal, as GBA games have held up great and I still play a lot. I do have an NES SP, so a DSi wouldn't cut me off, but the two-handhelds-in-one factor of the DS Lite is convenient.
I am not even very antsy for them to release a real DS successor, actually. I am afraid to lose the last haven for gorgeous, market-viable 2D and 2.5D games that is the DS.
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Well, now take that idea and apply it to DSi. For full effect you'll have fly to Japan and play in a creepy old abandoned village at night, though.
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I wasn't really looking to make distinctions, but PSP custom firmware allow you to literally rip your own UMDs (as in not obtaining them from anywhere else) and then run them. As I understand it, similar DS solutions don't work the same way, but I admittedly haven't stayed keyed into the DS homebrew scene.
Regardless, digital distribution for handhelds is a brilliant idea and I hope all the players involve push forward with it.
Mp3 decoding would cost them like $3 per DSi sold. Nintendo likes their money. Hence no mp3 decoding.
Let me tell you about Demon's Souls....