Please have a look at out loud. Game Boy – Game Boy Pocket – Game Boy Light – Game Boy Color (indeed, without a ‘u’) – Game Boy Advance – Game Boy Advance SP – Game Boy Micro DS – DS Lite.
And on 1 november in Japan available: the DSi, the third version of the DS handheld.
At first I was like, “yeah, Nintendo, we already have a successor?” But history teaches us that Nintendo in terms of portable-spelcomputerpolitiek always a three-eenheidstrategie has used. Only the Game Boy Color was a lonely global success. But the Game Boy also had three variants (the standard, the Pocket and the Light), and the Advance ditto (the Micro belongs to the Advance-family). The DSi is not, in itself, and by the time that the device in the Netherlands is launched – one speaks of spring 2009 – it is already three years back that the DS Lite was released five years (!) ago that the DS saw the light… how time flies…
A cursory survey shows that the DSi is not just a quickly modified device with a fancy new look. Was the DS Lite compared to the DS particularly in terms of the design a step ahead, the DSi has quite a lot of new features which its predecessor had not. As home to the device is a built-in internet browser, a photo camera, is the device again a bit thinner, the screens are 17 percent larger and there will be a DS channel, where you against a fee of Nintendo Points DS-games can download. The GBA port is sacrificed for a sd slot, there would be a lot of internal memory, and the stylus is a bit longer.
The question is of course: “What’s Nintendo with all these new features do?” A camera? Very important. Everyone knows that the typical camera on a mobile phone pictures of a moderate quality, and that will be on the DSi. No, it is much more interesting as Nintendo specific game concepts are going to develop in the mind the camera. Think of a Beyond Good&Evil-like game (in which Jade pictures of animals had to take to earn credits). Or a game that making pictures of the world around you in a certain way in a game pour. That can be quite exciting.
The built-in internet browser can, once again, are interesting but, as yet, does it mean that you are always at a hotspot in the middle. To redo the comparison with the phone to make… a little (business) phone can be anywhere online, so check my mail on my DSi to see I won’t happen. Also now Nintendo no doubt with games that use it, and the DS-channel, of course, is a smart cash cow: millions of microtransacties create a very pleasant living for the Japanese company.
Where I have my concerns about it, is the sd port. The GBA slot is sacrificed to the sd card. Since Vara’s Kassa found it necessary to explain how you DS games to an R4 card copy, know even Mien of Axes how to get free DS games to come. Many pricks a card with 40 gedownloadable games in his portable console and is ready. Anyway: in the Netherlands, the sale of DS games drastically declined. There are even smaller gameshops that for that reason no DS titles to be more in the range!
And now here comes Nintendo with the many gangbaardere sd format. The great advantage of Nintendo was that they through the years always has made use of different media, making games much more difficult to kopi lwa ren than those of the competition. Pick up a High Capacity sd card and you can find the entire portable back catalogue of Nintendo out lost. The copying will probably only get worse, I fear.
I suspect Nintendo are almost there, that they are not interested, that kopi lwa ren. The DS still sells like a mad and the DSi will also like hot sandwiches over the counter. In other words, Nintendo is laughing all the way to the bank in a time of kredietcrisissen, plummeting shares and nationalisation of lenders. Hardware sells, the games seem to be for the Japanese gamegrootmacht almost an afterthought.
Fortunately, the need DS Lite owners not feel cheated and to feel. When you are a DS-consumer after the introduction of the much nicer DS Lite in terms of design it more or less had the feeling of being a cat in a bag bought to have is the DS Lite still sexy. The DSi has more features, but almost all of the games will be initially for all of the DS platforms are accessible.
That the DSi again en masse is going to be sold, is actually already fixed. The status of the games is, however, the big issue. How inventive jump Nintendo and third-party developers to use the new applications and how legal or illegal are the versions that the public will soon be going to play? The editors of Pos have already again a topic for a vervolguitzending.