Nintendo DS Nov. 21, $149.

That is a good price. I was expecting maybe about $25 or so more. The release date is about right though. The Metroid Prime thing confuses me as well. I read in other places that the writer either got confused on something or that the Metroid Prime included would be a demo.

Also, we'll probably know a little more on the PSP pretty soon. IIRC, Sony was supposed to be talking to some Japanese press today...or yesterday or tomorrow. I could never understand that whole timezone thing. Anways, it has been speculated that they'd give some more info about the PSP including price and release date, as well as info on the PStwo and possibly the PS3. Actually though, I think they already talked about the PStwo yesterday, so there may not be much of that.

I guess if they don't give away anything, we'll learn more at the Tokyo Game Show during the 24-26th. I think there are suppose to be 100 PSP's with 20+ PSP titles and something else there, so that would be a good time to release info. For some strange reason, Nintendo is not attending this show for the 2nd time in a year. It makes sense that they would make a big announcement around this time, although I had read that they were suppose to have a conference early next month to discuss these things. I guess just picking it sometime, either right before or right after the TGS was what they planned.

Oh yeah, there are already some commercials in Japan. They got this one with Hikaru Utada (I think singer from Kingdom Hearts) going up to the DS and asking if she can touch it. The article said it shows almost every day after Power Rangers.

 

I hope they make a converter to play the games on Gamecube, there are a couple of neat looking titles but I hate handhelds.

 

Uhh.... why does a video game need to do instant messaging?

And, with all the spam that gets circulated thru IM and email, how long do you think it'll be before your nintendo constantly pops on to let you know how to buy cheap viagra?

-- droxford

 

WiFi for a palm pilot is hard enough, and they put it on a gameboy.

 

Well, until Viagra hires some people, gives them Nintendo DSs and has them walk around until they are within range of another DS so they can send a spam IM, I think it will be a while.

 

It sounded to me like the DS has a network connection and would use it for IM'ing.

But as I re-read it, it says you can send an IM "wirelessly to other DS users nearby."

Why would someone want to IM another person who is nearby? Couldn't you just talk?

-- droxford

 

It will include the demo (called First Hunt) for the Hunters game, not the full game.

 

Ewwwwww. Human interaction without the medium of a screen. Why would anyone want to do that?

 

When does the psp come out??

 

Last I heard, it should come our around the end of this year in Japan and probably around March or so of next year in the US. There's some info on the PSP, as well as the PStwo and PS3 that I put in the Gaming Thread here .

It looks like Nintendo and Sony are trying to make their handhelds to more just like cellphones and other electronics are trying to play games, although it looks like the PSP will do a little more than the DS. I haven't paid much attention to the connectivity stuff on the DS, or the PSP for that matter, but I think you can hook up to wifi spots and use it there to do whatever it lets you I guess. I think the range on the "nearby" part is pretty large, although it would still be better to talk I guess. It could probably just be like one of those secret message things maybe. Like I mentioned, I'm not all that up to date as I should be on the issues of connectivity on these handhelds.

 

I'd rather have a PSP that looks awesome!

 

What we know about the PSP outweighs what we know about the DS and that's that the DS (Nintendo in general) is third-party deficient. I love the way they've been rereleasing old SNES games (Mario RPG dammit!!!) but other than that and a handful of their own titles (Metroid, Pokemon,etc) Nintendo needs to get it's act in order. They need to just shell out money and get games like Final Fantasy or GTA into their arsenal. What I loved about Nintendo and Super Nintendo while growing up was their vast amounts of titles. Now..different story.

Double Screen? Touchscreen? Useless gimmicks. I'm sorry but even at 150 that still seems expensive.

 

I don't claim allegiance to any particular console because I did that back in the SNES vs. Genesis days (SNES fan) and I'm sad now that I didn't get a Genesis and that made me missed out on some great titles. The point of getting a console system are for the games. Granted, there's a lot of crap that's been floating around that PS2 and XBox has been releasing but those are the risks that they have to take. Nintendo, on the other hand, has just taken the same characters and 'reinvent' them. The Madonna of games if you will. Granted, nothing is wrong with that but you can only build a fanbase so big before you top out.

I personally know that Sony produces mediocre products and gets by just by it's name alone...like Nike or some other big corporation. But when it comes down to it, they get the games out there.

Price of course is a factor but lets face it: we all know a price drop will happen so why not wait for one? I didn't run out and buy the PS2 with that $300 price tag nor will I run out and buy the PSP with it's estimated $300 price tag either.

 

Why do ppl like to text msg on there cell phones during weekends when the talking on them is free?

I could never understand that concept but so many ppl do it.

 

]

That might be true for GC, but definitely not DS. Remember, DS is basically the successor to GameBoy where they enjoyed almost 100% of the hand held market with sales of over 170 million units. There were probably more developers on GameBoy than PS2 and as of now, between 100-150 games are already in development for the DS. Heck, even SqareEnix is developing games for DS (just like they did for Gameboy), but not PSP at this moment.

Anyway, some pics of the Nintendo DS, I think the design is much more mature and stylish than any previous GameBoys.







-G'day-

 

Hehe...they did. Didn't you hear about a GTA game for the GBA? Of course, I think it is basically GTA1 or 2, but it is GTA.

I pretty much agree that we know less about the PSP than the DS, or at least we know less when it comes to the big things, like price and battery life, which you mentioned. Some of that may be due to the difference in release dates, but the fact is that until Sony actually addresses these issues, we have no answers to those questions. Maybe after the TGS, we'll be able to answer those questions. Come on Sony! Quit leaving us in suspense!

We could probably speculate on both of these issues though. For price, I don't see it being much more than $300, if it even reaches $300 at all. It is an expensive piece of hardware to produce, but with the DS at only $150, they can't really afford to make the PSP that much more expensive. Depending on how it is received at the TGS, maybe they'll keep the price a little high if people love it, cashing in on those crazy fans who would pay anything for it and then lowering the price later for the rest of us. Either way, I don't expect it to cost too, too much.

Battery life is harder to predict. Like I mentioned in the other thread, they had some people from IGN, IIRC, that got to test out the PSP. They were there for an hour with people constantly playing every PSP available and the PSP they were at was still had a full battery meter. (3 notches full) By this, I guess we can assume that it lasts longer than an hour and probably more than 3. It really depends on the developers on the games though.

That is one thing that I've been bothered with about the PSP. They got pretty good dev support from a lot of developers, but one of their big ones doesn't want to go with the PSP as of yet. The DS games from Square-Enix don't really interest me but the fact that they got several games on it and none for the PSP makes me a little nervous for the PSP. It looks like Square-Enix will only make FF7:AC for the PSP and that would be a movie.

There is a possibility that maybe they want to make a surprise. There have been some people that think that maybe FF7: DC would be on the PSP. I personally don't think so, but FF7: DC did surprise me. With the amount of attention on the video game world during the TGS, that may be a good time to announce something. It probably won't happen, but I wouldn't doubt it if Sony and Square-Enix were doing something like this. If Sony could get something, such as a FF7: DC, the PSP would do well for sure, IMO. With the DS coming from the same line of handhelds known as the Gameboys, the PSP will have to be pretty awesome (which it does appear to be) to be able to make it in the handheld market.

Something that seems a little strange to me is how quickly this gen of handhelds seems to be going. IIRC, Nintendo want to release the GBA 2 in 2006, or somewhere around there IIRC. I would assume that Sony would like to match that with a newer version of the PSP, perhaps one using Cell. And I thought this generation of consoles was pretty short.