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The Nintendo DS (which is short for Dual Screen, although Nintendo has also promotionally said it to be short for Developer's System, due to the ease of development for the handheld), is an innovative dual-screen portable video game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. Its code name was Project Nitro. The DS has a vertical clamshell design, similar to some Game & Watch video games, and the Game Boy Advance SP.
Nintendo hopes that the new features present in the machine will provoke unique game development, attract developers, appeal to both older gamers and non-gamers alienated by normal input methods and allow Nintendo to retain its status as leader of the handheld game console market.
Games
The Nintendo DS' primary function is as a videogames console; no multimedia support is included, though an adapter for playing movies and music will be available in Japan at a later date (see Accessories). The entire machine has been constructed, from concept to completion, in order to provoke more original development of titles in an industry that Nintendo perceives as being stagnant. Nintendo hopes that the unit's unusual dual screen format will provoke creative game design by its own and third-party developers. While the most obvious unique selling point is the pair of screens, the system also includes some unexpected input devices: a microphone and touch screen functionality on the lower screen. Developers are taking advantage of this. A common approach is to use the touchscreen to emulate analogue joystick or mouse functionality.
Releases
North America and Japan
The system was launched in North America for $149.99 USD on November 21, 2004, in Japan for 15,000 yen ($135) on December 2. Well over two million preorders were taken in North America and Japan; preorders at online stores were launched on November 3, and ended the same day as merchants had already sold their allotment. Initially Nintendo planned to deliver one million units combined at the North American and Japanese launches; when it saw the preorder numbers, it brought another factory online to ramp up production. Nintendo originally slated 300,000 units for the US debut; 550,000 were shipped, and just over 500,000 of those sold through in the first week.
Both launches proved to be successful, but it is interesting to note that Nintendo chose to release the DS in North America prior to Japan, a first for a hardware launch from the Kyoto-based company. This choice was made to get the DS out for the largest shopping day of the year in the US (the day after Thanksgiving). [1] (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/11/12/news_6113031.html) Perhaps partly due to the release date, the DS has experienced unexpectedly high demand in the United States, selling 1 million units by December 21, 2004. As of the end of December, the total number shipped worldwide was 2.8 million, about 800,000 more than Nintendo's original forecast. [2] (http://www.nintendojo.com/infocus/view_item.php?1105105971) At least 1.2 million of those were sold in the US. Some industry reporters are referring to it as "the Tickle Me Elmo of 2004." [3] (http://www.sacticket.com/gamers/story/11763629p-12648524c.html) In mid-December 2004 Nintendo raised its estimates of sales by March 31, 2005 (the end of the company's fiscal year) to 5 million units worldwide.
As is normal for electronics, some were reported as having problems with dead pixels in either of the two screens. Return policies for LCD displays vary between manufacturers and regions, however in North America, Nintendo has chosen to replace a system with any number of dead pixels under warranty. (Typically a display must contain more than a certain number of dead pixels to qualify for warranty replacement.) Policies followed by Nintendo in Japan are believed to be somewhat stricter.
North American launch games
The following games were released within the system's launch period (the 30 days starting from November 21, 2004).
At launch there was one pack-in game, in addition to the built-in PictoChat program: Metroid Prime: Hunters - First Hunt (published by Nintendo). It continues to be bundled with the system as of January 2005.
Europe
The DS will be released in Europe on 11th March 2005. It will retail for £99.99 in the United Kingdom and 149 in the rest of Europe. However, on 28th January 2005 Nintendo of Europe announced that a limited supply of DS units would be provided, as well as a promotional T-shirt, Metroid Prime: Hunters - First Hunt, a WarioWare Touched! demo and a pre-release version of Super Mario 64 DS, through the Nintendo Stars Catalogue; the bundle was priced at £129.99 for the UK and 189.99 for the rest of Europe, plus 1000 of Nintendo's 'star' loyalty points.
The European version of the DS will continue to be packaged with Metroid Prime: Hunters - First Hunt.
European launch games
Design and specifications
Technology
The handheld unit has a mass of approximately 275 grams. It features two separate 3-inch TFT LCD screens, each with a resolution of 256×192. The lowermost display of the DS is overlayed with a touch screen, utilizing a stylus or the user's fingers, a first for a games console. The DS has a wrist strap that doubles as a thumb cover for use in place of a stylus. The console uses two separate ARM processors, an ARM9 main CPU and ARM7 coprocessor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively, with 4 MiB of main memory. The system's 3D engine is theoretically capable of drawing 120,000 polygons per second, with a fill-rate of 30 million pixels per second.
DS Games utilize a proprietary solid state flash card format resembling those used in other portable electronic devices such as digital cameras; this semiconductor technology is said to be far cheaper than conventional cartridges and can be used within a system without moving parts to jar out of place when dropped. It is currently capable of supporting cards of up to 1 gibibit (128 MiB) in size. The unit features wireless networking capabilities for multiplayer games or chat, which can use either a proprietary short-range wireless link (supporting up to 16 players), or Wi-Fi. The proprietary link is capable of a range up to 40-100 feet (30 metres), depending on conditions. The DS uses the IEEE 802.11 standard for Wi-fi, slightly modified for the proprietary link.
Inputs and outputs
The DS is the first portable console from Nintendo to incorporate stereo speakers. In addition to the touch screen, the DS has, to the left of the lower display, a traditional four-way control pad (with a narrow Power button above it), while to the right are four action buttons (with narrow Select and Start buttons above) A B Y X, following in the footsteps of the SNES controller. On the back there are the L (Left) and R (Right) buttons, also following the style of the SNES controller. Perhaps the most innovative use of the touch screen is for the emulation of other controls. For example, with use of the previously mentioned "thumb stylus", it can emulate a analog joystick, or with the conventional stylus, its behaviour can replicate a computer mouse. The system also includes a built-in microphone, which Nintendo has suggested will be used for communication over a wireless network, and controlling games programmed for speech recognition.
Operating system
Nintendo's own custom firmware boots the system: from here, the user selects to run a DS or Game Boy Advance game, use PictoChat, or search for downloadable games. The latter is an adaptation of the Game Boy Advance's popular "single cartridge multiplayer" feature, adapted to support the system's Wi-Fi link capabilities: players without the game search for content, while players with the game broadcast it. In November 2004, Nintendo announced its entry into the feature animation business, suggesting that these features would broadcast game content to Nintendo DS units via this same feature.
The PictoChat program is permanently stored on the unit, allowing users to communicate with other DS users over the wireless network by text, handwriting, or drawings, using the DS' touch screen and stylus for input; an on-screen keyboard partially covers the touch-sensitive area while using this mode.
The DS' main menu also features an alarm clock and the ability to set preferences for boot priority (booting to games when inserted, or always booting to the main menu), GBA game screen usage (top or bottom), and user information (name, date of birth, favorite color, time, etc.).
Compatibility
Slot compare between GBA and DS
DS's slot is designed to prevent from inserting legacy GB software Initially the console was reported to be incompatible with games designed for Nintendo's present Game Boy Advance (GBA) handheld, but details announced at the E³ trade show in Los Angeles in May 2004 revealed the opposite; while the new DS cartridges are smaller and fit in their own port, the machine has a separate cartridge port accepting Game Boy Advance games (including Majesco's Gameboy videos), although Game Boy Color and original Game Boy games are incompatible with the DS, due to its lack of the z80 processor used in these systems. This may be an attempt to separate the DS and Nintendo's established Game Boy line of handheld consoles; the GBA, for example, featured the aging processor primarily to run "legacy" Game Boy games. It may also simply be to keep the DS' price down; including another chipset would likely have significantly added to the cost of producing the unit.
Though the DS no longer has the z80 processor, several projects have started to emulate this platform. The DS has enough power to do so, and the projects have already started because ARM9 is a known platform. It may also be possible to port and/or play games from the GP32 platform, which is also ARM9-based.
The handheld does not have a port for the GBA Link Cable, so multiplayer or GBA-GameCube link-up modes are not available in GBA titles.
Accessories
Although the secondary port on the Nintendo DS does accept and support Game Boy Advance cartridges, Nintendo has emphasized that their main intention for its inclusion was to allow a wide variety of accessories to be released for the system, the compatibility to Game Boy Advance titles being only a logical complementation due to the similar architecture of the two systems. Possible accessories are GPS receivers, television tuners, as well as a variety of accessories already included in certain Game Boy Advance cartridges such as tilt-sensors, solar-sensors and vibration generators.
Nintendo have announced the development of an adaptor which will allow the Game Boy Advance SP and Nintendo DS to play MPEG-4 videos and MP3 music from SD (and possibly MMC) memory cards. The adaptor bears a superficial resemblance to the AM3 player (which allowed playback of pre-recorded movie files from read-only memory cards on a GBA); the memory card slots into the right hand side of the adaptor, which then plugs into the cartridge slot of the parent console. The adaptor has its own integrated headphone port, but uses the parent console's power supply, controls and display. It is estimated that it will offer over 15 hours of MP3 playback and 4 hours of MPEG-4 playback from a fully-charged GBA SP.
The adaptor will launch in Japan in Feburary of 2005 for approximately 5,000 yen ($47.47). As of 2004, Nintendo did not announce plans to sell the unit outside of Japan.
Speculation regarding additional features
The DS has been the subject of a cryptic "promotional campaign" reminiscent of the Haunted Apiary promotional used to generate buzz for the Xbox game Halo 2, although not put out by Nintendo itself.[4] (http://www.nintendojo.com/specials/view_item.php?1096488064) It consists of a series of heavily modified images. While the meaning of the hints given about the system has not yet been explained, some believe the DS will be able to communicate with other DS systems in the vicinity, extending to create a long-range mesh network connecting DS players over large geographic distances. Yet others link a heavily modified image of a marionette bearing the legend "find me" (with a faint "s" after the "d") with a possible Xbox Live-style frontend for handling online gaming. An image of a child using a DS console near a dog has been claimed to be promoting the game Puppy Times, of which little is known (although it is hardly a secret).[5] (http://www.n-sider.com/newsview.php?type=day&date=2004-10-06)
This campaign originated on the forums for the Warp Pipe system, from anonymous insiders who claim to know a great deal of interesting information but who are limited by a non-disclosure agreement, as well as Warp Pipe founder Chad Paulson. However, it is not clear whether the users', or even Paulson's, information is genuine.
It has since been discovered that the advertising is related to a service called "Demasked" which will supposedly come out soon. Its website can be found here[6] (http://www.demasked.com).
See also
External links
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