Nintendo’s Stroke of Genius

For the past few years people have been saying that the handheld console’s days are numbered because the phones that people carry around with them are getting better and better at playing games.

The logic here is that you are already carnying around a device that you use to call and message your friends, which also gives you access to the internet and a slew of games at your fingertips whenever you want them. Why on earth would you want to also carry around a larger device that only allows you to play games, and maybe lets you access the internet on a crippled browser if you happen to be within range of a WiFi access point (Note I appreciate that Sony’s PSP Vita comes in a 3G flavour but personally I find the idea of paying for a 2nd data contract when I have a perfectly good data contract on my phone slightly repulsive).

There are a small contingent that will argue that a D-Pad or Analogue Stick and buttons are much better for playing games but if you look at the way the industry is going both Nintendo and Sony are migrating towards touch screens. Another argument is battery life, in that if you spend a few hours playing a game on your phone you probably wont be able to use it to make calls later, and although smart phone battery life is nothing like that of the mobile phones we had in days of yore it’s getting slowly better, and for the office slave it’s perfectly normal to charge your phone while in the office so it’s still usable while you are at home.

These arguments aside my personal experience with handheld consoles lately has been that I’ve had an initial honeymoon period where I carried the thing about with me all the time, and occasionally even played games on it, then bit bit bit I started to “forget” to carry it around. I found that most days I didn’t have time to play on my hand held, so I didn’t bother bringing it with me.

Then when I did have time to play games, I didn’t have the handheld on me, but I did have my phone so I amused myself with a short game of Bejewled or some other mindless puzzle game. It’s a viscous circle, sure the games I had on my phone weren’t as good as the one’s I had on my GameBoy Advance, PSP, or  DS but they were the games I had on me.

Sony has tried to make the PSP and the Vita useful in other ways, they’ve added a web browser and music and video playback, to these consoles, and although I admit to having watched a lot of Anime and TV shows on my PSP while travelling my phone and my tablet do all of that much better than the PSP ever could, I don’t know about the Vita but I also don’t see much point in carrying about two devices that do the same thing.

About three months ago I bought a 3DS XL, I’d been unimpressed by the 3DS at a Nintendo preview event and the reported battery life had put the nail in the coffin of any intention I had of buying one, but the XL fixed my issue with screen size and the battery life was better so I took the plunge.

Now when I got it and set it up I had to create an avatar or Mii and the setup process intoned to me that there would be mini games that I could play using something called Street Pass, I wasn’t really interested in this, I’d bought the console so I could finally play Ocarina of Time and see what the hype about Fire Emblem was all about.

After a few days of mainly playing indoors I took my 3DS out with me, and when I got home I noticed a flashing green light on it, when I opened the console there was a message saying that I’d met someone while I was out and that I could play games with them using the Mii Plaza.

I was curious so I opened up the Mii Plaza and got a piece of a puzzle and played a stripped down RPG. To paraphrase Mr. Bobinski from Coraline, “That was nice but not so Amazing”. Anyway I was still carrying about my 3DS because was was still in the honeymoon period and every day I noticed the little green light with more and more people added to my plaza I slowly got hooked on Street Pass Quest, and I noticed that the 3DS had a pedometer built into it, that gave you coins to spend in the games for walking about. I’m no fitness freak but I’ve always like the idea of having a pedometer to see how much I walk, just never enough to buy one. Now I had one for free, and I got points for walking!

Here is where the genius of the 3DS comes in, you don’t have to actually play it all the time to benefit from having it on you, you pick up coins, you add to people to your Mii Plaza, heck you can even get bonuses in the actual games you are playing.

The 3DS encourages you to have it on you even when you know you aren’t going to be able to use it, because you might pick up some Miis for your Mii Plaza and because you will earn coins by walking about.

I even saw a post on Reddit a few weeks back (I’ll link to it once I find it) asking if people actually started getting out of the house more just so they could get Street Pass hits, most people didn’t but a lot of people did say that they often altered their walk home to to school so that they would pass by places where they thought they would get more street pass hits.

There is even the potential to meet or in some cases seriously creep out people who you bump into on a regular basis which is quite cool and a way to meet fellow games.

What Nintendo have done with the 3DS is Genius, it’s made me carry about my console most of the time just in case I get a street pass hit and to rack up my pedometer. But in doing so it’s made me play more games on the 3DS, which will mean that I use the 3DS more and probably continue to buy games for it rather than in languishing in a drawer somewhere because I never get a chance to play games on it.

What if Apple Designed the GameBoy?

Artist Patrick Staudt re-imagines the Nintendo GameBoy as it would have been designed by Apple. The thing is the original GameBoy was  released in 1989 at about the same time Apple released the Newton. I think for a game playing device the GameBoy is definitely more iconic and probably better designed than the Newton…

File:Nintendo Gameboy.jpgApple Newton-IMG 0454-cropped.jpgFile:Apple Newton.jpg

Also if apple designed the GameBoy right now we would probably just end up with the iPhone,iPod Touch or iPad because lets face it those products do what the GameBoy did and are both stealing market share from Nintendo and Sony.

But if hypothetically Apple’s design engineers went back in time and took with them the technological advances that allow them to make the iPhone so slime but not the retina display and their hatred for physical buttons and decided in their infinite wisdom to stick a green and black dot matrix screen on their design for the GameBoy then it might just look like this (More comments inline, Comments may be sarcastic…):

Wireless? Wirelessly connecting to what? The internet didn’t even exist at that point. And modems maxed out at 28.8K in 1989 (Or there abouts). You might have had IR connectivity but that would have been slow as hell too.

 

I’m not going to bother looking up the GameBoys max FPS I doubt it was that high…

I’m willing to bet he thought he was being clever by going that small… In that size of packaging you’d have been lucky to squeeze 8Mb into that device if you wanted room for other electronics. It wasn’t till 1991 that you could even get a 100Mb 2.5″ drive a 2.5″ drive is about the size of an iPhone…

Okay so they are designing it now… Otherwise how WiFi? The WiFi alliance wasn’t formed until 1999. Still 200 hours of gaming on a battery that fits in that case? Even with a DotMatrix screen the original GameBoy managed 10-12 hours on 4 Batteries. What fantasy world do they live in! I want to be there! But I can’t! Why am I shouting!

My thumbs have power… Also zero mechanical failure? That’s impressive, except my Old GameBoy that I got in 1989 still works, so not that impressive…

Oooh volume!

What the hell do those buttons do? I assume the are contrast buttons but that’s only because I had a GameBoy and it had contrast buttons on it.

 

Portable SNES This I Need!

image

Hyperkin a company that specializes in making accessories for current and retro consoles are going to be releasing a portable SNES this summer, it’s US only as far as I can tell but I assume someone will import it to the UK or at least I hope so. Not only does it allow you to play games on the 3.5″ LCD screen but you can also connect it to a TV and plug in two controllers! Double awesome! I knew I kept all my old SNES games for a reason.

On another note Hyperkin actually make quite a few nifty devices including consoles that have slots for NES, SNES and Genesis (Megadrive) games. I wonder if they are region locked and only play US games of if they will allow you to play UK/Japanese games too?

They currently do a portable Genesis and NES though the cartridge for the portable NES is actually bigger than the console. It does come with a light gun though, for all the good that will do on a modern TV…

Sadly all their products are only available to resellers…

via Edge

As far as I’m concerned Nintendo has lost the Handheld “Console War” for this generation…

TL;DR: Battery life and touch screen on 3DS sucks. I think handhelds are dying out and are going to be replaced with more generic devices, probably not phones, but probably tablets.

A report from Arstechnica about the battery life of the 3DS confirms my worst fears. The 3-4 hours was not a conservative estimate, apparently if you turn off 3D WiFi and sound you get a whopping 5 hours, assuming the game you are playing doesn’t require these features.

Contrast this with the DS’ battery life, of 10 Hours (Wikipedia), it’s just not good enough. If your handheld can’t keep a child occupied playing Pokemon for most of a trans-Atlantic flight then there is little point in it being a handheld.

Also having tried out the 3DS the 3D aspect of it wasn’t much to write home about, sure it looked cool, but I’m not sure how much it adds to game-play, I’m one of those people who doesn’t like 3D movies, so I may be  a little biased, but it strikes me that the addition of 3D has hamstrung the console by taking away one of the core advantages that Nintendo handhelds have always had; battery life.

Game Boy Vs. Game Gear, DS Vs. PSP, GBA Vs. Well there was no viable competition for the GBA…  Nintendo have always had the edge when it came to battery life, and they’ve just sacrificed that edge for a gimmick.

The DS’ other novel feature the touch screen seems to have been ignored in the 3DS, I had a go at using the 3DS at a Nintendo open day and the touch screen was terrible, it’s a resistive touch screen, so you have to use the stylus. While this may have been acceptable when the DS was released in 2004 it’s not acceptable now. Everyone and their monkey has a touch screen smartphone with a capacitive screen, meaning you can use your fingers, the 3DS feels like a step back after using that.

As far as I’m concerned the jury is still out with regards to whether the Sony NGP will be the clear winner in the handheld battle, it certainly has every feature under the sun… But it’ll probably come with a price to match. I’m starting to think that the hype about smartphones and tablets usurping the handheld gaming market might be true, for one thing they can be subsidised by phone contracts so it feels like  they cost less, and for another they seem to have the raw power that handhelds lack.

The issue fails back to battery life though, my Android smartphone barely lasts a day if I use it for texting, calls, and checking Twitter. Add gaming to that and I’ll need an extra battery.

The iPad manages 10 hours of use, and if you do deplete the battery you aren’t cutting your self off from the world, which is why I think there is a market for tablets in gaming. The processor is powerful, the screen is huge and the battery life is awesome. Plus you can do other things on it like browse the web, check social networks etc…. You may be locked into Apple’s walled garden but what a garden!

There is the option of Android tablets, I’ve yet to try one aside from playing with a Galaxy Tab in a shop, I wasn’t impressed. I am impressed with Honeycomb, or at least the videos I’ve seen of it online, but I’ve not had a chance to play with it yet and I’m going to wait till I do before I formulate an opinion.

This is turning into a rant…

Via Arstechnica

Nintendo Are Region Locking the 3DS!

I’m not sure how reliable the source for this is at the only citation they have for it is an email in Korean, and I can’t translate the email using Google translate because it’s an image of the email… But…

I wasn’t aware the DSi was region locked, I’m gutted that the 3DS will be though. As a “World Traveller” I’ve always just bought games wherever I was and expected them to work on my hand held gaming device. I kind of understand why you’d region lock a home console, it’s unlikely to see use outside of the country it was purchased in, although both the PS3 and the X-Box 360 are for the most part region free.

The whole point of a portable is that you can take it on holiday with you, when on holiday if you happen to complete the game that you brought with you you should be able to buy another game to play while you are out there, you shouldn’t have to wait till you get home…

I’d skipped the DSi and was looking forward to the next iteration of the DS hardware to jump back on the bandwagon, but this is very close to a deal breaker for me…

Tech2.com India.

This is Awesome! I want this bed spread so much it hurts…

If it weren’t for the fact that Annabel would kill me for getting this I’d buy/get somone to make it in an instant! The temptation to make jokes about it being a double bed, and that anyone sad enough to have this not being able to find a “Player 2” are rendered moot by the fact that it seems to have been made by a girl, at least according to the pictures on the instructables page for making it.

If anyone out there is feeling particularly crafty and really wants to get me a joint birthday/Christmas present that would leave them in credit present wise till at least 2020….

Via Infendo

Nintendo 3DS Could be cool but I’m Skeptical

Nintendo have Quietly announced the Nintendo 3DS which is the successor to the DS Line. Lets see if we can figure out the features from the name… 3D DS…. It’s got 2 screen and “games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.” Hmmm I’m dubious, I guess they could use some funky eye tracking to make it look 3D.

It really reminds me of the Virtual Boy which Nintendo released in 1994 or there abouts. It only lasted for a year. The video below is a review of every game ever released for the Virtual Boy. While some small part of me wants one I would never pay more than £30 for one. I’ve seen them going for £80 in Game Station but that’s just too much…

Anyway some of the Features the 3DS is touted as having:

Backwards Compatibility with DS and DSi Games

Nintendo would be shooting themselves in the foot if they didn’t do this, it’s a proven formula for them and assures a strong back catalogue at launch)

Acceleromter/Tilt Controls

This seems to be the way mobile games are going and keeps it in line with Nintendo’s biggest rival for the handheld space… The iPhone…

High resolution Screen (Possibly 720p?)

I have no doubt that it will have a larger screen, and it will probably be higher resolution than the DS’s 256 x 192 screens 720p seems a little pointless considering the size though… I’d like to see video out like the PSP-2000 but the 2 screen input of the DS might not translate very well. Apparently both screens can be treated as a single screen so that might lead to a combined resolution of 720p

It’s possible that it could be powered by an Nvidia Tegra Chip

This makes sense as Nintendo have a history of using mass market chips in their hand helds, the Tegra is the up an coming chip boasting performance and efficiency.

3G SIM slot

This again seems to be a wise decision, Data tarrifs around the world have been driven down, and a 3G connection allows easy access to game downloads (a market strategy shown to be viable by the Kindle, iPhone, and Android) as well as other applications, such as network gaming. I assume it will also have Wifi as everything does these days.

Twin Cameras

One on the back and one on the front, this facilitates DSi Backwards compatibility and eye tracking. It also opens up a few interesting possibilities.

Conclusion

It looks like Nintendo are filling in the features they need to claw back the handheld market from the iPhone, the only feature missing is GPS… The 3G Sim/Wifi and the Camera lead to video conferencing, I’d like to see them partner with Skype as that would make this a killer device in and of it’s own. I’m skeptical about the 3D without the need for special glasses, I’m picturing holding this thing in my hand with a 3d princess Leia hovering over the screen asking me to help her… It could work, I guess… I remain skeptical

Leia

They will probably market this as an e-Reader as they have the DSi XL that’s not a bad thing, assuming the screen is good enough. The 3G SIM allows you to buy books wherever you are. I think I remember reading somewhere that Nintendo are looking to put DS’s in the classroom this would be a good way to do that.

I guess we’ll have to wait till E3 in June to find out…

Via  GameTrailers.com & Geekosystem & Gizmodo & Wired