If you’re looking to see what the next greatest DS hand-held will look like, plan to wait until Nintendo starts to see declining sales trends for their current DS hardware. Sensible from Nintendo’s standpoint, but a major bummer for those hand-held gamers who want to see something new and cool out of the Nintendo camp.
While the DS sells great, many of us tech fans would love to see what a new generation of DS would look like. Perhaps something closer to the iPod touch in screen size and touch-abilities with real WiFi capabilities connecting to the Internet? Wouldn’t it be neat if they added GPS location and tilt abilities much akin to the iPhone or iPod Touch?
Personally, I envision a system where you are in total control of your character from leaning, to sliding, to moving your fingers around the screen and communicating over the Internet sharing high scores, drop-in drop-out multiplayer titles with complete voice communications.
Alas, Nintendo tends to gimp most of their hardware from hot innovation such as Internet communication, much like the Wii. While Nintendo has the next-generation capabilities now for Internet communication they’ve constantly opted to have a more useless version of connectivity to “protect the consumer.”
We need a DS store, much like the Xbox Live Marketplace for downloading DS casual games, considering DS game size is much smaller than a PC, PS3 or Xbox 360 title. We need a smaller form factor mimicking the iPod in thickness and durability with a larger screen or unfolding dual screen to double the size of an iPod style play area.
Hardware innovation seems to be more acceptable to Sony and their PSP product while Nintendo always opts for something more simple. Unfortunately, the PSP cannot compete against the DS which will leave them in the lead with very little desire to re-up their hardware with new capabilities and sexy new designs.
Oddly enough, the DS is the perfect device for the mass market which means they’re not going to be forced to innovate beyond its current capabilities for now. Apparently people don’t desire huge leaps in technology, screen size and speed, or we’d would probably see a decline or dis-interest in the DS hardware, thus forcing Nintendo to re-innovate and evolve.
The day will come, but probably not for a long time.
@Nintendo announces XL version of Nintendo 3DS: No surprises there. It’s kind of a given that they make new versions of their handhelds after it has been proven very profitable for them.
@New users must now pass “review process” to unlock full Diablo III: All this makes me wonder is, how much higher would the number of sales be if there hadn’t been all this stupid DRM on the game? Don’t know why they feel the need to punish their customers. It seems that only Valve knows that the way to being a loved company is by being loyal to its customers.
@Valve and Cartoon Network collaboration hints at Team Fortress 2 show: After I’ve seen what can be done with the “Meet” shorts, I can say that I’m interested to see what they come up with.
@QOTW: Nope, not really. Apart from making sure I have proper lighting and heating/cooling, I don’t do anything special.
Jonah, no rush on Mission Impossible. I can come up with other weird NES games 🙂
@Nintendo announces XL version of Nintendo 3DS
I’m curious if this has to do with the pixel size as well. When the console was announced (display size and resolution) I crunched some numbers to find out the view distance to fully use that resolution. It came up as about 8 inches. That’s too close.
A bigger screen would also mean a bigger view distance.
@Dev claims Microsoft killed XBLA version of Stranger’s Wrath
This is so odd. What’s it to MSFT if the game gets distributed or not on XBLA? Normally a publisher would not care that much as long as some quality standards are met.
I mean it’s not like they’re worried about shelf space, we’re talking about a digital distribution channel.
@New users must now pass “review process” to unlock full Diablo III
*clears throat* Ahem!
Bwa ha ha ha ha 😀 😀 😀
And I thought that online DRM was the worst thing that could happen to a single player game. Boy, was I wrong!
And if this doesn’t ramp up piracy, then I don’t know what will.
@Valve and Cartoon Network collaboration hints at Team Fortress 2 show
Dunno … they’ll have to move outside of the game in order to make it happen.
We’ll see.
@steel battalion poor reviews:
well to be fair the problem doesn’t seem to be its complexity its that as per usual with kinect it just doesn’t interpret your commands correctly 75% of the time.
and hey ubisoft press conference had more than watchdogs ….rayman legends looks amazing. =p
What is this place? Why am I writing this? Who are you people? Must…save…Skyrim. VAMPIRES ARE EVERYWHERE!!! THE DAWNGUA OK I am back in the real world now.
@3DS XL
Enjoy not having any games to play in greater resolution. Good point made by Paul: it’s not the size that matter’s. It’s the way you use it.I bought a DSi because it was a massive improvement over the original DS in terms of hardware and software. 3DS XL is just a bigger brick with bigger screens. A premium brick is still a brick.
@Oddworld: Strangers Wraith
I loved the game. It was a very interesting twist on a first person shooter. An adventure FPS with an interesting story and fun gameplay. As far as I remember, EA killed it by not advertising it. When it came out there was not a single mention of the game in media. And you had FIFA 2006 adverts posted on every bus, wall and toilet roll in London. Thanks a lot, EA.
@Diablo 3:
Que Blizzard: “No you can’t play the game offline. No, you can’t play it online either. Just give us your money, sit down and shutup. We made the game. We decide who deserves to play it and you clearly don’t unless we perform a full criminal record check and ensure that your credit card is American Express Mega Gold Platinum X”
To follow up a point made last week, just out of quriosity, if you have an opportunity to customize your game(i.e. create a character or change his name) do you personalize them and give them your name (or nickname) and your likeness? Or do you leave default settings? I tend to try and represent myself as much as I can in an MMO or Skyrim, but usually leave default settings in games where they are definitive of the series. All of my Zelda characters are called Link and my main Mass Effect character is the front cover Shepherd as he is on every media advert on the planet.