Gameboy DS Arrives...
The new Nintendo DS showed up here and it looks to me like this is going to be a huge hit for them. Nintendo, of course, is a long time player in this space and over a nearly twenty year span fought off all competitors in the mobile gaming space. Even when competitors had superior feature sets such as color screens (something the Gameboy didn't get until the mid-90s) Nintendo owned the space. I was a little skeptical when word first came out about the dual screens. I was more optimistic at E3 when I was able to play with some pre-production hardware and software. After using final hardware and playing Metroid on it, I have no further doubts. This thing is amazing. The attention to details is wonderful, such as the little strap you can attach and then use as a "thumb stylus" for the touch screen or the way it asks for your birthday (for who knows what purpose). There's two wireless technologies built in, Nintendo's proprietary one and 80211. Right now, nothing takes advantage of the WiFi capability, but I expect that to change over time and pretty quickly. The key for me, however, was, would the software match the hardware capabilities and all examples I have seen from Metroid to Mario do this well. The second screen isn't just a gimmick but something that really gets incorporated into the gameplay. Finding innovation is hard in the mobile game space, especially when the cellphone can provide an OK casual gaming experience. Nintendo has raised the bar in mobile gaming by focusing on core gameplay and creating a richer environment. There's also a natural barrier of the second screen, preventing developers from simply porting titles to other platforms, it can be done, but all the advantages of the second screen are lost. Also, in Nintendo tradition, all Gameboy Advance titles (but not older ones) will work with the DS so there's an instant catalog of 700 titles.
There's not doubt in my mind that this is going to be a big win for Nintendo. The fact that Sony will not have the PSP for sale in the US this quarter is just the icing on the cake for Nintendo. As for the PSP, we'll just have to wait and see how that unit shapes up, there's too many conflicting reports about things like battery life to make a really good assessment at the moment.
Posted by Michael Gartenberg at November 12, 2004
I'm just getting more and more hyped about the DS.. I really do hope it can pull through the whole "PSP gonna be under 200" event. I think it can.. but who knows.. stranger things have happened (I mean.. c'mon.. who saw the Virtual Boy failing? No one!)
