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Why aren't the techies embracing the DS?

Deku said:
What boat a sinking one?



Play-yan? And they can listen to MP3s and watch videos on the micro too, which is about four times smaller and actually portable.

I think several posters here have that. Don't make an ass of yourself man.

BTW, what's that fat man doing. What happened to your chavez avatar?

I have an ipod for listening to music on the go. The PSP's media functions, to me, are pure fluff at this point - fun fluff, hey, I have a few mp3s on my memory stick and a few pictures to use as wallpapers. But it's just not really that useful right now for all those "convergence" functions. the fact that you can't even do bloody obvious things such as listen to music while browsing images or using the web browser is retarded. Granted, it seems a bios update could fix this.

God forbid another company market a portable device that doesn't cost more than a console and focuses just on playing games too! Every technology product must use the absolute latest technology, with the most features crammed in beyond its basic point, and damn the price! And it is kind of amusing when I think about it... I remember some tech-whore arguments back when the PS2 was revealed that went like "we don't need a game console that plays DVDs! We all already have DVD players that do it better! What a fucking waste of resources!"
 
Kaijima said:
God forbid another company market a portable device that doesn't cost more than a console and focuses just on playing games too! Every technology product must use the absolute latest technology, with the most features crammed in beyond its basic point, and damn the price! And it is kind of amusing when I think about it... I remember some tech-whore arguments back when the PS2 was revealed that went like "we don't need a game console that plays DVDs! We all already have DVD players that do it better! What a fucking waste of resources!"

You're talking about a company that 'lost' its music player domiance to Apple by making well made but ultimately very flawed music players. PSP is just the latest iteration of Sony's decline in the portable world. It may be nice, but you could say the same thing about Sony's walkman ipod killers that failed to kill anything. I was glad I sold mine years ago when there was still someone naive enough to want it because it's a Sony.
 
drohne said:
everyone who owns a ds is playing castlevania, right? you know how it makes you write your name at the beginning? post visual evidence of anything better than blocky baby-scrawl and i'll concede. :lol

They don't need Castlevania; Pictochat is included in the OS. Here's some shots from a quick GIS:

ds20raz20fan20art1.jpg


pictods7oc1.jpg


pictoart_wariowaretouched1.jpg


dsspace11ib.jpg


dscarlito3gx.jpg


dsc021752os.jpg


metroidperspective1bw.jpg


pictospiderman8qk.jpg


pictochatanim1.jpg
 
APF said:
They don't need Castlevania; Pictochat is included in the OS. Here's some shots from a quick GIS:
There's a difference between drawing pictures and writing text. That's why you can display icons just fine on an LCD, but generally need Cleartype enabled for the font/text. PEACE.
 
I think the DS is cool hardware, and some of the games coming out for it interest me -- I'll be buying it before a PSP, in part because of the price. It's also in large part because while I'll probably use it on occasion around the house and now and then on vacation/while travelling, my actual need for a portable is pretty low... so playing console games lite, regardless of how cool that capability actually is, isn't worth the price of admission to me right now, while playing games that embrace the stylus will be something new.

That said, I think the DS is probably overpriced (I take no comfort in the idea of Nintendo making a per-unit profit), especially here in Canada where it should be more than $15 cheaper based on current exchange rates.

I also think that it continues a Nintendo trend of cheap-ish looking devices. I don't think it's ugly, but the silver plastic they always seem to use seems like something from an action figure, not an electronic device (same goes for the black on my GC and the white on my GBA). Maybe they've bucked this trend with the GB Micro and the Revolution (which I think looks great).

And I can also see why it's not all that interesting to the so-called "techies" of PC magazines. The PSP is incredibly powerful and a really attractive gadget from a pure style perspective. While the DS offers a console innovation, the stylus is something a lot of those readers have been using since the days of the first PalmPilot. Or the Apple Newton. :) OK, no one used a Newton... (Eat up Martha)
 
Pimpwerx said:
There's a difference between drawing pictures and writing text. That's why you can display icons just fine on an LCD, but generally need Cleartype enabled for the font/text. PEACE.

I believe the discussion was about sensitivity of touchscreen?
 
is the DS screen pressure sensitive? all those pics look like B&W. Even a bottom of the barrel graphics tablet has 256 lvls of pressure sensitivty these days.

I dunno, I haven't really played with one that much, but the metriod prime demo (YES! I was in a store!! :P) felt very unresponsive and sloppy. Of course I am a PC kb/mouse whore. But the way people where talking about "THIS IS THE BEST CONTROL FOR AN FPS EVAR!!!" I was really let down by the MP:H demo.

does any one have the actual specs of the DS touchscreen? The pictures you posed make it look pretty bad :P but that may just be picochats cheesyness.
 
Drinky Crow said:
Kaijima, I ain't seeing the improved 2D power -- all I see is some extra 3D effects tossed in, but even that is crippled by the SNES-era resolution. The PSP is the machine I want for 2D.

I can't see how you aren't impressed by Burnout: Legends -- my head lashes back and my hair gets all Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future when I fire it up -- but hey: I find the DS 3D utterly intolerable and it seems some of you like them big ol' 4-bit fist-sized unfiltered texels, so what do I know?

Are you a moron?

You sound like one of those pimpled face spoiled teenage brats who finally convinced mommy and daddy to buy them a PSP, and gets mad that it doesn't have any good games.

Wake the fuck up. The DS has fantastic titles, and a lineup that shits all over the PSP. The only game worth owning on the damn thing is going to be GTA, and it's so underhyped that who knows how good it'll be.

The only thing I play on my PSP to make it worth keeping are Nintendo games anyway.
 
xavean1 said:
Are you a moron?

You sound like one of those pimpled face spoiled teenage brats who finally convinced mommy and daddy to buy them a PSP, and gets mad that it doesn't have any good games.
Wake the fuck up. The DS has fantastic titles, and a lineup that shits all over the PSP. The only game worth owning on the damn thing is going to be GTA, and it's so underhyped that who knows how good it'll be.

The only thing I play on my PSP to make it worth keeping are Nintendo games anyway.

:lol Overstatement at its finest
 
Raoul Duke said:
Well, that just goes to show you that ignorance really is bliss. I didn't know any of that, but I was really happy. Finding it out made me sad; then I realized that the quality of the playing/viewing/listening experience was likely to be shitty compared to the PSP, and now I am happy again. The circle of life!

That fat man is Chris Farley as Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker. He's living in a van, down by the river. His wife kicked him out because he liked Nintendo.

Actually, the GBA's official movie and music player is only shitty if size is all that matters (for movies). A well encoded video for PSP, which is the format PlayYan uses, will look nice on the GBA or DS. For music, the GBA is far and away the better machine (especially the micro) and by extension the DS is better because of the price you pay (although the DS is worse than the PSP from a size standpoint).
 
I think the purpose of this thread was to illustrate how easy it is to get the likes of drohne and crow to dance.

Obviously, from a processing and multi-function standpoint, DS isn't PSP's equal.
 
Pimpwerx said:
There's a difference between drawing pictures and writing text. That's why you can display icons just fine on an LCD, but generally need Cleartype enabled for the font/text. PEACE.

LOL! First off, that has nothing to do with this discussion; second, legibility is a resolution issue. Even icons--which are generally displayed much larger than 10-12px/pt fonts--are often antialiased in the design process, so I have no idea what you think you're saying here.

Flo_Evans said:
is the DS screen pressure sensitive? all those pics look like B&W. Even a bottom of the barrel graphics tablet has 256 lvls of pressure sensitivty these days.

I don't know the answer to your question, but pictochat doesn't register any difference in terms of sensitivity. I think, however, this is getting a little off track. I posted those to show you can do something more than shaky block letters with the touch screen, not to show it's comparable to a real dedicated graphics tablet. I mean, come on. It would be interesting to compare the system to other relatively new ~$150 PDAs out there, just to see what's considered average in terms of touch screen pressure sensitivity out there (I really don't know, I haven't bought a PDA in years)...
 
CO_Andy said:
Whenever i pick-up a magazine unrelated to core gaming (like PC World, News Week), i usually find an article inside promoting the PSP (and nothing on the DS).

Do these editors even play games? They're always praising the PSP's features, but could barely go in-depth to the system's games.

I guess this explains the profitable UMD market here.

Don't blame the techies for nintendo's failure.
 
Anyway, the reason that PC World et al aren't talking about the Nintendo DS is because you can't hook up your DS to a computer and upload all sorts of random shit to it. I think that's pretty obvious.
 
Drinky Crow said:
I own 9 PSP games and 3 DS games,
wait...you bought a ds?

i don't understand.
 
APF said:
I don't know the answer to your question, but pictochat doesn't register any difference in terms of sensitivity. I think, however, this is getting a little off track. I posted those to show you can do something more than shaky block letters with the touch screen, not to show it's comparable to a real dedicated graphics tablet. I mean, come on. It would be interesting to compare the system to other relatively new ~$150 PDAs out there, just to see what's considered average in terms of touch screen pressure sensitivity out there (I really don't know, I haven't bought a PDA in years)...

True, its a little unfair.. I am just trying to figure out how good/bad the DS touchscreen is. You have one side saying 'its super sensitive and totally precise!" I doubt these people have ever used a high end graphics tablet as a frame of reference. From all the pics and my short personal experience with it, I would put it with other low end PDA devices, basically - shitty.
 
APF said:
LOL! First off, that has nothing to do with this discussion; second, legibility is a resolution issue. Even icons--which are generally displayed much larger than 10-12px/pt fonts--are often antialiased in the design process, so I have no idea what you think you're saying here.

The analogy was indeed flawed. Drohne's point is that you can't write legible text. This is a result of lack of precision. My point is that you don't need precision to draw a picture. A picture is not like writing text. The analogy to the font on an LCD screen was flawed. I should have just noted that it's easier to sketch something like on a sketchpad, or with MS Paint than it is to write a legible piece of text. Precision plays a large role in it, and so far, the one pic anyone's posted of their text for that game was indeed chichken scratch. Hell, I've seen the Pictochat text, and it's the same damn thing. Meanwhile, you can pretty readily run handwiting-to-text convertors on my sister's ancient Clie b/c the touchescreen is just that much better.

Is there really any debating the shittiness of the DS's hardware? Profits and Nintendogs can't distract this topic, so I fail to see the point in mounting a defense. PEACE.
 
mattiewheels said:
wait...you bought a ds?

i don't understand.

It seems that all nintendo haterz here are secretley fans of Nintendo. Drinky is owning a DS with games (and dont forget that GBA SP), and Raul Duke got the cube twice. It's pretty funny. They just can't keep away from Nintendo products though they "despise" them. (or maybe not)

oh and don't forget drohne and his nintendo handhelds.
 
mattiewheels: He bought it to play the games on it he wants. It doesn't mean he can't hate the hardware.

I'm starting to like the DS a lot. It's ugly, bulky, I hate the touch screen, and it could use an analog pad and brighter screens. However, I like the games (the same games I liked on the GBA) so DS for the win.

I can't believe some people think the increase in 2D quality isn't noticeable. The difference between Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow is considerable.
 
Pimpwerx said:
The analogy was indeed flawed. Drohne's point is that you can't write legible text. This is a result of lack of precision. My point is that you don't need precision to draw a picture. A picture is not like writing text. The analogy to the font on an LCD screen was flawed. I should have just noted that it's easier to sketch something like on a sketchpad, or with MS Paint than it is to write a legible piece of text. Precision plays a large role in it, and so far, the one pic anyone's posted of their text for that game was indeed chichken scratch. Hell, I've seen the Pictochat text, and it's the same damn thing. Meanwhile, you can pretty readily run handwiting-to-text convertors on my sister's ancient Clie b/c the touchescreen is just that much better.

Is there really any debating the shittiness of the DS's hardware? Profits and Nintendogs can't distract this topic, so I fail to see the point in mounting a defense. PEACE.


For all the GBA praising the system still gets around here, even with the release of the PSP the so called DS haters horde which includes drohne, Drinky and MAF i wonder if they would still praise the GBA if it was released around the same time as PSP....
 
kobun heat's blocky baby-scrawl looks uncannily like my blocky baby-scrawl. either this points to deep and hitherto unsuspected psychological affinities between me and my SWORN ENEMY, or the ds touchscreen sucks so much that it doesn't reflect differences in individual handwriting.
 
I didn't buy a DS. I traded a GeForce FX 5200 PCI card for it. I got ripped off. :(

I'll probably ditch it after I finish Castlevania, unless someone reassures me that New Super Mario Brothers won't suck. I don't get the boner some of you do for non-games like Animal Crossing and canned puppy animations, so a future where me and the DS spend any quality time together looks pretty dim.
 
Drinky Crow said:
I didn't buy a DS. I traded a GeForce FX 5200 PCI card for it. I got ripped off. :(

I'll probably ditch it after I finish Castlevania, unless someone reassures me that New Super Mario Brothers won't suck. I don't get the boner some of you do for non-games like Animal Crossing and canned puppy animations, so a future where me and the DS spend any quality time together looks pretty dim.

guess you werent around on the 5th of october........... :lol
 
If the GBA came out when the PSP did, you'd hear no end to my mockery. Wait, you'll STILL hear no end to my mockery concerning the DS, so I guess it's really an academic distinction.
 
drohne said:
kobun heat's blocky baby-scrawl looks uncannily like my blocky baby-scrawl. either this points to deep and hitherto unsuspected psychological affinities between me and my SWORN ENEMY, or the ds touchscreen sucks so much that it doesn't reflect differences in individual handwriting.
So either

1) I'm in your head

or

2) Drawing at the pixel level with a standard-width stylus on any machine like this isn't really going to produce beauty. The question isn't whether the DS does it well but whether anything in the same price ballpark does, and even my Clie which is not cheap produces similar results.
 
Drinky Crow said:
neptunes, outside of Mario and Luigi 2, none of 'em look especially appealing. For me, graphics are part of an RPG's charm.

Yeah, rpg's are pretty much the only genre I play on handhelds and both handhelds are devoid of any good ones at the moment.
 
Drinky Crow said:
I didn't buy a DS. I traded a GeForce FX 5200 PCI card for it. I got ripped off. :(

I'll probably ditch it after I finish Castlevania, unless someone reassures me that New Super Mario Brothers won't suck. I don't get the boner some of you do for non-games like Animal Crossing and canned puppy animations, so a future where me and the DS spend any quality time together looks pretty dim.

Personally I am not interested in nintendogs, animal crossing or brain training. But the DS offers more than that. Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, new Wario Land, Super Princess Peach with Super Mario World graphics. New mana game, FFIII remake, Zelda DS, viewtiful Joe. Another Castlevania planned for 2006. The list of 2D platformers and games are pretty long.
 
no, hang on, kobun heat's blocky babyscrawl is much better than mine: i can't squeeze anywhere near that much text into the box. i'm not sure it vindicates the ds's touchscreen, but i commend his penmanship. or his patience. whichever.
 
Yeah, and I'll bet drinky has Nintendogs and his very own drinky puppy :lol

In terms of technology, there are different aspects of both the DS and the Psp that are impressive.

Obviously, the Psp is a more eye-catching device and it looks cooler, thus people that like to show off their new technological devices are far more interested in showing that off. However, the technology involved in the psp isn't anything that impressive.

The only "new" technology that the psp employs is the UMD, which is an inferior proprietary format that holds far less space than a dvd and is currently priced higher. Mini Disc impressed me more than UMD.

The DS has longer battery life, more screen real estate and a very unique input device that makes for interesting(and sometimes gimmicky) gameplay concepts. Surely I'm not the only tech head who is more impressed by the older technology of the touch screen and the new possibilities it brings to playing games than I am by the standard miniaturization of old technology and a new inferior media format.

I think the PSP is higher tech than the DS, but I think the DS is more interesting technology than the PSP.
 
To those who think the DS' screen is unresponsive: I'd suggest going into the DS' option menu and recalibrating the touch screen. I did that and I noticed it perform a little better.
 
GitarooMan said:
I don't want to start some big PSP vs. DS debate, but I tend to disagree with the common consensus that DS blows away PSP game wise. One easy example is in racing, in which the DS doesn't have anything worthwhile yet

Here my DS and PSP games

DS
Meteos
Spider-Man 2 [BAD GAME, ouch... not much fun here]
Mario
Nanostray [Medium game, too short and no good structure]
Castlevania
Trauma Center

PSP
Ridge Racer
Lumines
Wipeout
Medievil [BAD GAME, camera sucks]
Darkstalkers [BAD GAME, crappy port]
Death Jr. [BAD GAME, stupid shooter]
Namco Collection [BAD GAME, retro but in a bad way]
You missed Kirby, Advance wars, Wario ware touched! and nintendogs.

Overall line-up of the NDS is much more unique and refreshing than the ports on the PSP.
Don't get me wrong, I love my PSP, but it is more of the same (which isn't very bad, but NOT refreshing).

Fuck technology, if it plays the most fun games, I'm in.....
 
You missed Kirby, Advance wars, Wario ware touched! and nintendogs.

Overall line-up of the NDS is much more unique and refreshing than the ports on the PSP.
Don't get me wrong, I love my PSP, but it is more of the same (which isn't very bad, but NOT refreshing).

Fuck technology, if it plays the most fun games, I'm in.....

I wasn't really saying my choices were good/bad (everyone has their own opinion, I don't think Medievil is a BAD GAME, it's not perfect but it has good sound/graphics and is a fun hack and slash, camera is a problem), but just that that the libraries for each system aren't as unbalanced as people think. Last check, there were like 10 DS games with a gamerankings over 80% and 9 PSP games. Some people may not like the "PS2 on a handheld" type of games, but others do. I know I'm missing games for both systems, but I personally don't see the wide gap in game quality others do.
 
Drinky Crow said:
Coming from a dude with a Revolution avatar, I can't say that I find your perspective particularly compelling.


Ah well, thats all it is, really.. perspective. Can't say that I expected to convince anyone to see my point of view :)
 
Kaijima said:
- so it's a noticably improved PSOne with a lot of the benefits of the N64 hardware. .

sorry but im still waiting for the ds to make games lik tobal n2,vagrant history,gran turismo i dont see the ds as a improved psone
 
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