Nintendo’s announced the DSi, the third iteration of its DS platform. But how does it stack up to the Nintendo DS Lite? We’ve crunched the numbers and got the data for comparison’s sake. That, after the jump.
During the Nintendo Fall Press Conference earlier today, all company president Satoru Iwata could offer on the state of the DSi’s global rollout was that it’d leave Japan “sometime” in 2009. Fortunately, Nintendo of Europe are a little more forthcoming, telling GI.biz that they’re aiming to have the handheld ready to launch in Spring 2009. Note they say “aiming”, which in conjunction with it being NoE is far from confirmation of a concrete release, but a target date’s better than no date at all.
DSi to launch in Europe spring 2009 [GI.biz]
Here it is folks! We now have some video of the newly announced Nintendo DSi in action. Behold the bigger screen and the glorious games you can expect on the system in the near future.
Nintendo have released the first official shots of the new Nintendo DSi.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata just announced that the company plan on re-releasing a number of GameCube games…on the Wii. They’ll form the “Play On Wii Selection”, and will…yes, be shamelessly preying upon the millions of people who own a Wii, never owned a GameCube and don’t realise that GameCube games work just fine on the Wii. Ah well. Here’s hoping they at least release some of the better games that are a little hard to find in the clearance bin these days. Be interesting to see whether this Pikmin is the one Miyamoto said they were working on for the Wii. Wouldn’t that be a laugh.
While we haven’t had the PAX penny voting yet (it’s still coming! soon!!), we’re gearing up for another contest. We’re giving away a copy of Fracture, a multi-platform title that features deformable terrain. Here’s the contest: Make something with dirt. Anything! Dirt painting, dirty sculpture, dirty dirt dirt. Take a picture, put a Kotaku sign on it and send it to kotakucontestATgmailDOTcom. Contest ends next Friday, October 3rd. Dirt lasts forever.
Fracture [Official Site]
You wanted Wii games? You got Wii games. Speaking at the 2008 Fall Press Conference, Nintendo boss Satoru iwata has announced a range of new Wii games. And not music things, or fitness things, or brain things. Games. And those games are: Punch-Out. Another Code (a Wii version of the DS adventure game). Dynasty Warriors, which will be making its debut Wii appearance. And, finally, Sin & Punishment 2. Yup. Punch-Out Wii, and Sin & Punishment 2. We’ll update with screens as soon as we get them.
You may have seen a few ad spots floating around Kotaku recently about some new courses coming to AFTRS in 2009. Ads or no, I thought it was well worth digging deeper to find out more details for you — just as Logan gave up his gig here at the Kotaku desk to take up the dream gig of Game Designer at Tantalus, I’m sure plenty of readers would love to explore the opportunity of making games. And these two courses really do seem to be an excellent way for talented, creative game lovers to go a step beyond the code and artistry (awesome as that is) and aim for a designer role.
Today some brief notes on what I’ve learned about the courses, and in coming days I’ll share some more information gleaned from interviews with two of the key staff involved with the development of the new programs.
The essentials. We’re talking Graduate Diploma level studies, with applications due November 7. Courses in Game Design and Virtual Worlds are both full-time over two semesters in 2009. These aren’t like courses you can do at a graphics college. You won’t be focusing on learning 3D graphics and programming tools. The focus is creative leadership, understanding game mechanics, and prototyping your concepts. More on the basic ideas behind the two new courses in a video after the jump.
Finally. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has just announced that, beginning in Spring 2009 (at least for Japan), Nintendo Wii owners will be able to download software directly to an SD card. “We have to address the console’s insufficient memory storage,” said Iwata, speaking at today’s Nintendo Fall Press Conference. This obviously applies only to WiiWare and Virtual Console games, but hey, since they were the things clogging up your memory in the first place, it’s hard to see this as anything other than good news. Not perfect news, but still, better than silence.
During their Fall Press Conference today, Nintendo have – as expected – announced a new version of the Nintendo DS. Called the Nintendo DSi, it eschews the GBA slot (boo!) in favour of a range of improvements. The handheld’s screens have been enlarged, and will now be 17% bigger (at 3.25 inches) than those found on the DS Lite. As for the rumoured additions, both have proven to be correct, with “audio enhancements” made to the handheld, while it will also now include a 3 megapixel camera. [image]
