RSS Feeds
|
US Edition
Babblebaby
|
Defamer
|
Gizmodo
|
Kotaku
|
Lifehacker
We got not one, not two, but three Dragon Ball Z: Origins trailers to satisfy your needs. Luckily, you don't have to wait much longer. You can pick up the game for Nintendo DS November 4th. More videos after the jump.
Reaction to the DSi thus far has been a little mixed. Yeah, it looks nice, but it also doesn't look much different than the DS Lite. Yeah, it's got a camera, but it's lost the GBA slot. And if we can't make up our minds about the device, why should we expect Sony to be any different? Sony director of hardware marketing John Koller:
The DS Lite was a replacement for the DS. Came in, took over the place, you never saw the DS Phat again. So will the DSi do the same thing to the DS Lite? Not in the US, says Nintendo Smile Machine Cammie Dunaway:
Right now we're still working through what the strategy's going to be here. But we think that there's huge untapped potential for the DS Lite. Because when you've got only one in every five households in the U.S., compared to one in every two in Japan, it says there's potential.You've seen some of the work we've done this year with celebrities, that we're bringing a lot of new consumers in to the DS. So I think there's opportunity for both of them to coexist for some period of time.
You know, I still have nothing but a DS Phat. And when I see statements like this, I feel like the world's just passing me by...
Q&A: Nintendo's Cammie Dunaway Talks DSi, Club Nintendo [Wired]
Go on. Guess. The elderly? WRONG. Teenage girls? WRONG. Japan's biggest users of the DS are (according to this Nintendo-supplied chart, anyways) the same who were the biggest users of the GBA, and the Game Boy before that: boys. Specifically, 10-12 year-old boys. After that, though, it gets interesting. The most dominant demographics after the boys are women in their early 30s, followed by 10-12 year-old girls, followed by men in their early 30s. Not teens, not twenty-somethings, but people in their early 30s. Anyone in charge of putting the questions together for their Friday night pub trivia competition, these ones are on the house.
While Japan is getting the DSi this November, the U.S. isn't. In fact, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said the company won't be bringing the DSi to North America until late 2009 because it wants to continue selling the DS throughout the holiday season. Nintendo Co., Ltd. president Satoru Iwata is even more vague, telling business paper Nikkei, "The DSi will probably be launched in the US and Europe next year." Outlining his vision of the DSi, he adds:
Mystery. Solved. That mysterious Nintendo pedometer from the other day has turned out to be more than a patented pipe-dream, as it featured in yesterday's Nintendo Fall Press Conference. The pedometer is to be bundled with DS game "Your Life Rhythm", which is basically a Brain Training/Wii FIt kinda program, just for your DS. And all you do is walk. So exactly like a normal pedometer, then, just a little more expensive, and a little more fiddly, since a normal pedometer doesn't make you plug it into a portable gaming system just to see how far you've gone.
Just yesterday Nintendo announced its latest DS iteration, the DSi. And today, the DSi pre-order fliers are popping up at the Sofmap in Akihabara. Says the flier:
Pressing announcement! On November 11th, the new model is finally arriving!
New DS Nintendo DSi Price ¥18,900
At last, the new model has finally been arrived!! The screen is lighter and a little bigger, and there's even an embedded camera! A SD card slot! These modifications seem fun!
Oh goody! Thing is, the Sofmap flier goes on to put the pre-order date as TBA.
「緊急発表！ニンテンドーDSi」 予約は未定 [Akiba Blog]
Yesterday in Tokyo (there's a difference!) Nintendo announced the latest DS iteration, the DSi. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced the DSi at approximately at 1:39pm Japan time. How did that affect the company's stock price? That, after the jump.
It's really hard not to be a complete sucker for Metal Slug. Luckily, the seventh game in the series is headed to the Nintendo DS November 18th. Please feel free to never stop making sequels to this game, thanks!
The whole Mushroom Men concept is one bizarre creation from Gamecock. The thing is that you can't help but stare at the beauty of it. There's something really intriguing about helping a lone fungi find his place in society. We have screens from Spore Wars (Wii) and Rise of the Fungi (DS) here in the gallery.
Nintendo took a moment during their press conference in San Francisco this morning to assure desperate parents that the Nintendo Wii and DS Lite would be in ample supply this holiday season. Specifically, Wii supplies should see a significant increase over last year's levels, while the DS will be available in greater numbers than ever before.
"We have new games and new experiences for every kind of player this holiday season, and that will certainly fuel increased interest in Wii and Nintendo DS," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "While there's no way to gauge total demand for our hardware systems, we're trying to satisfy as many of those players as possible."
My suggestion? Buy them early anyway. Don't let promises of increased supply cause you to wind up crying in front of a Toys R Us video game counter because your child's holiday is ruined. You're a bad parent, and that's okay. The book they write one day will pay for your nursing home.
Speaking to North American press in San Francisco this morning, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that the camera-toting, music-playing DSi won't be coming to our shores for quite some time.
Fils-Aime said they wouldn't be bringing the DSi to North America until late 2009 because they want to continue selling the DS throughout the holiday season.
He said that the music and camera functions are not meant to rival the iphones, but rather supplement game play. The onboard imaging software is meant to be a "fully interactive camera for your everyday life."
The music songs are stored on the SD card in AAC so you can transfer between the PC. The DSi will have built in software that lets you speed up or slow down songs, change the pitch, and filter tracks. So you can do things like isolating the lyrics. You can also record your voice as a track and mess around with it.
The DSi actually has two cameras built into it, one on the outside and one inside, centered on the hinge.
Amanda Glasser
So we've got a new DS coming our way, with a slightly bigger screen and a really crappy camera built in, but for some folks out there the big news is the built-in SD slot, a feature that was some worried that the DSi might make rampant DS game pirating even easier. Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Team 17 studio director Martyn Brown echoes my concerns over the sub-par camera and suggests the SD slot might become yet another entry point for pirates.
"Adding an SD slot makes a bunch of sense for downloadable content given the way things are going," offered Brown. "I just hope they've done something to counter the mass piracy that exists via the R4 on the Lite. It scares me that with an SD card input, that might leave it even wider open that it was on the original device," added.
I've known suburban housewives with flash cards for their DSes, so if you ask me, it really doesn't get much easier than it already is.
Team 17 boss cautious of new DSi features [GamesIndustry.biz]
Today's Nintendo Tokyo press conference in a nutshell or a duck press. Whichever! Don't forget we'll be bringing you the very same news, perhaps with a North American slant, from San Francisco a bit later today. Stay tuned, but perhaps without the bated breath.
Liveblogging the Nintendo Press Conference Liveblog
Nintendo Announce New DS: The Nintendo DSi
Save Wii Games Direct To SD Card (Starting Spring 2009)
Nintendo's New Wii Games: Punch-Out, Another Code, Sin & Punishment 2, Dynasty Warriors
Nintendo Re-Releasing GameCube Games On Wii, Pikmin's First
Get A Good, Close Look At The DSi
VIDEO: First Look at the New Nintendo DSi in Action
Let's Compare The DS Lite and the DSi
Close Up With The DSi (Alright, Who's Buying?)
VIDEO: Japan, This Is Your Wii Line Up
As Nintendo announced today, its new DS variant, the DSi, is outfitted with two cameras and music playback. And with DSi Camera, users can add effects that include face composition that combine faces, distortion, superimposing face altering expressions and adding picture frames. DSi Sound access SD memory card sound files to alter the tune's playback. There are various music visualizers as well — baby chicks hatching out of eggs, for example. Via the mic, it's possible to record up to 10 seconds of sound, and it's also possible to alter the sounds as well as music.
ニンテンドーDSiの内蔵機能、「DSiカメラ」と「DSiサウンド」でできること [IT Media]
Those hoping for Wii or DS price cuts this holiday season, go on and hope some more. Well, at least in Great Britain! Nintendo UK boss David Yarnton says there are no plans for pricetag reductions this Christmas. According to Yarnton:
In terms of Nintendo's business, we feel that Wii and Nintendo DS already represent great value for money. This combined with out focus on market expansion and bringing people of all ages to our products through making them smile and helping to enrich their lives means that we currently see no need to drop the price on either of our formats this year... As retailers continue to try and maintain footfall and secure share in the current difficult economic climate, this Christmas should see some interesting and very competitive retailer-led promotions.
No price drops from Nintendo, but retail enticements. Happy Holidays everyone!
Nintendo confirms no price drops for Xmas [Videogamer]
Announced today at a Nintendo press conference in Tokyo, here are the first non-PR pictures of the Nintendo DSi, including a look at the portable's box. Nothing quite like packaging. After the jump, there's a close-up of the DSi, a blurry close-up at that. But it does show the new DSi interface.
Our question: Who's keen on picking this up?
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.
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]
At 1:30 Tokyo Time, Nintendo kicked its fall press conference. Since Nintendo is not attending the Tokyo Game Show, we expect the event to have some year end surprises and hopefully a bombshell or two. When we asked about invites, Nintendo Co., Ltd. told us that the event is Japanese press only, so we'll be doing a not-so-live liveblog — AKA translating the Famitsu and Gemaga liveblogs.
Hit the jump for that.
Before we go any further, know that the full details on this are a little scarce, and we imagine we'll only get the whole story at TGS next week (or during the Nintendo presser in a few hours). But the latest issue of Famitsu says that upcoming Square Enix RPG Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time will be playable on both the Wii and DS. Same game, available on both systems. Meaning that the Wii version is - yes - essentially a port of a DS game. There's some other stuff about being able to play cross-platform (which is presumably the whole point of this), ala Crystal Chronicles, but again, we'll hold off on getting too excited until we get the full details from Square Enix next week.
[Famitsu, via Game|Life]
