Nintendo announces Nintendo DSi
Nintendo's Media Summit was the platform where Satoru Iwata unveiled the new Nintendo DSi, the direct successor to the DS Lite. It isn't a new generation, as it will accept DS games in its Slot-1, but it will lose out the GBA cartridge slot. Makes me wonder how the DSi is going to handle various DS games that require the Slot-2 to work such as Guitar Hero: On Tour and the fancy paddle controller used in another title. Other improvements include
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- Larger 3.25" displays
- Reduction in size by 2.6mm (very minor - will see how it pans out in the end)
- 3 megapixel camera
- VGA camera
- Music playback (no need for the R4, eh?)
- On-board browser
- WiiWare compatibility
- DSiWare download service
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Each DSi will come with 1,000 free Wii Points for you to get started. It will be available in Japan this November 1st for $180 or so - would be interesting to see it clean up the rest of the competition where weekly hardware sales are concerned then. You can choose from matte black and matte white colors, although you can bet your bottom Pokemon that those aren't the only colors to be available in the near future! I think I just wet myself.
[ ubergizmo ]
The New Nintendo DSi Drops 1-6 Hours in Battery Life
newly announced DSi specs in a one-on-one showdown. We see all of the expected small upgrades—the screens are a tiny bit bigger, the case ever so slightly longer and thinner. But the big surprise? Battery life bites it big time.
On low brightness, the DS Lite was rated at 15-19 hours of life. The DSi gets only 9-14 in the same conditions. That's a loss of 5-6 hours. Higher brightnesses show less battery loss for the DSi, ranging from 1-5 hours less on "high brightness" and stabilizing to a 1-2 hour reduction on "highest brightness."
But a major selling point of the DS was its ridiculously great battery. And the only explanation we could maybe reason is that the DSi could brighter than the DS Lite, meaning that each of these tiers is actually brighter than advertised in side-by-side comparison. Well, that, or Nintendo figured out how to build DSs even cheaper and let the battery suffer as a consequence.
One thing's for sure. The slight reduction in case size alone is not enough to justify these new battery ratings
Nintendo DSi: Everything You Need To Know
There has been a flurry of Nintendo news since the company announced their new DSi handheld on Wednesday night, but that avalanche of stories -- many of them coming from a Japanese press conference -- means there have been a lot of misinterpretations and half-truths reported. We decided to compare notes and round up all the important info on the DSi so far.
Say Cheese -- The most obvious change to the DSi just from looking at it is the addition of a .3 megapixel camera. Did you know the DSi actually has two cameras, though? During the Nintendo of America press conference in San Francisco Thursday morning, president Reggie Fils-Aime revealed that the new portable device has both the obvious camera on the shell pointing at the outside world but also one on the spine that looks at the player. Pictures taken with the DSi can be manipulated and edited via the touch screen, including combining multiple pictures, distorting images, or even slathering them with graffiti. And once you've finished messing around, your images can be instantly shared with any other DSi users in the area.
Size Matters -- Though the DSi is actually thinner than the DS Lite, its screen is larger. At 3.25 inches, the screen is just enough bigger than the DS Lite's to be noticeable. Check out the comparison shot below to see what I mean.
The Sound of Music -- A lot of early rumors about the next iteration of the DS suggested it would be add full MP3 player functionality. While the DSi can play music, this isn't exactly the case. Songs can be played on the handheld off of an SD card only if they are in the AAC format. What it lacks in compatibility, though, is more than made up in weird functionality. The DSi comes loaded with built-in audio software for fast-forwarding and rewinding through tracks as well as controlling the pitch and speed. You can even apply audio filters if you want -- Reggie used cutting vocals out of a song so you can just hear the instruments as an example. We're not exactly sure how useful these features are, but they're certainly intriguing. In more practical terms, the DSi's built in mic will allow you to record your own voice.
Backward Incompatibility -- Of course, this redesigned DS couldn't be getting all of these nice new bonuses without giving something else up. Because of the additions of an SD card slot and camera while also trying to make the system thinner, the DSi will no longer have a slot for GameBoy Advance cartridges. In theory, this just means not playing old handheld titles that a lot of DS owners probably weren't interested in anyway, but there are some DS titles that use the GBA slot as well, such as Guitar Hero: On Tour and its recently announced spin-off. We're guessing Activision will come up with some kind of solution for this problem in future handheld versions of Guitar Hero, but On Tour owners will probably need to hold onto their older DS systems if they want to enjoy some rock on the road.
Download Pending -- As they did previously with its big console brother, the Wii, Nintendo is introducing downloadable games to the DSi. Titles that will fit onto the system's flash memory -- the size of which remains unrevealed -- will be purchased from the new Nintendo DSi Shop service using Nintendo Points, the new platform-agnostic title for Wii Points. The first available titles on the service will be repurposed versions of the Brain Age games. While there's a lot of potential for cool stuff here, including the tantalizing possibility of GameBoy and GameBoy Advance games appearing in a portable Virtual Console, we'll need a lot more information on how many games will fit onto a DSi and what they'll cost before we really get psyched up.
Lockdown -- One of the most impressive aspects of Nintendo's handheld lineup -- for super-hardcore gamers like us, at least -- is that they have always been region-free. Importing games from Japan was never an issue on the GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, or DS. Since the DSi continues to use regular DS cartridges and is compatible with all previous DS games, we suspect that will remain the same with the DSi...for physical releases at least. Downloadable titles in the DSi Shop will probably be heavily split based on region just as they are on Virtual Console and WiiWare. We can only hope that not all the quirky obscure Japanese titles we so love playing go digital.
Where, When, And For How Much? -- Nintendo isn't yet ready to tell us a specific release date for the DSi in North America. All Fils-Aime would say at the press conference is that the system will not be here until "well into 2009," suggesting at least a six month or longer wait for the new handheld. Eager importers will be able to check it out quite a bit earlier, as the DSi will release first in Japan on November 1, 2008. Of course, the company hasn't released an American price point either, but if the Japanese price of 18,900 Yen is anything to go off of, we're probably looking at a $180 handheld. It's quite a bit higher than the $130 DS Lite but not far from what we'd expect of a sleek new portable device from Nintendo.
SOURCE : 1up
Nintendo Points Are Non-Transferable
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Why must Nintendo be so uptight and frigid in the way they do things? First they remove region compatibility with downloaded software for the upcoming DSi, and now we learn that Wii Points, digital currency for the Wii platform cannot be transferred to Nintendo Points that is meant for the DSi. This is a bummer since there are people out there who have not touched their Wii Points in months due to many factors (uninteresting games, being too busy in real life, etc) who might want to check out the DSi when it is released. You will be able to purchase Nintendo Points cards in 1,000, 3,000 and 5,000 denominations, where individual titles will be priced at 200, 500 or 800 points. According to Nintendo, the non-transferable policy is there because Nintendo does not have a centralized bank system despite all the money they're raking in this generation.
