I think just to piss everyone off Microsoft should announce a portable system with THREE SCREENS and 3 Gigabit's of RAM!!! Now you'd be talkin'!

So what again is the media format for the games? Will you upload games into the console's RAM somehow?

Good lord people, talk about rushing to judgement. You haven't even SEEN the thing, yet you're proclaiming it the worst idea ever, no 3rd party software companies will support it (yeah, like Nintendo is going to design a piece of hardware without ANY support of 3rd parties), and it's an instant failure.

Nintendo's president said it best, this isn't an evolution of their other consoles, it's something new. Games for this will be designed differently than other systems allow for. Whether or not it succeeds remains to be seen, but I applaud the effort of trying to take gaming in a new direction rather than just saying adding 1 feature to an existing device and marketing it as new.

It deserves a chance. I look forward to seeing what this actually looks like and what the games will be.

Game & Watch! I have a number of these games boxed up somewhere, didn't make the connection of the DS to the Game & Watch series until I saw your photo.

They made a Game & Watch Zelda?! I want one.

It's on Game & Watch Gallery 4 for GBA.

I think the worst idea is releasing ANOTHER system when they already got two systems out. If the games for this thing are "killer" then it is only going to serve to take money away from the GBA.



Honestly, i have to wonder if this isnt some vaporware or just something to try and take some focus off the PSP.

Who proclaimed it the worst idea ever?

As far as I can tell, everyone is just posting their first impression. Almost every comment is prepended by "It sounds like" or "It seems like" not "It is".

i even said that i'd wait until may when it will be officially announced...

This is a good idea.

It will likely cost a good bit more than the GBA, but it's going to be put out to compete with the PSP which industry estimates have costing $300-400.

This will likely be cheaper as it will probalby use cartridges, not play movies etc. and just be a gaming only device.

I probably won't get one, but this should be able to compete with the PSP more than the GBA.

Sounds dumb but ohhhh well still be fun to see it like any new hardware or game.

Whoops. I did read it but must have jumped right to the 1 Gigabyte thing.

Actually there are several GBA games that have 128 mb and maybe i think 256. There were many many N64 carts that were over 64 mb.

Actually there weren't any N64 games that went above 64 megabytes. Most were 32 megabytes or less, with a few at the end of the N64s shelf life that were 64 megabytes.

You might be thinking of megabits, in which the largest N64 game was 512 megabits (64 megabytes), but the poster you quoted was referring to megabytes instead of megabits.

I'll wait too. Sounds interesting, but until I see the thing in action I'm still unclear on how exactly it works. The games will be the real testing ground to see how they use this technology. They said it will be a system in addition to the GC and GBA, not a replacement. And from the sounds of it it seems like no other company has tried this out before. We shall see. This might be a Japan only product.

The gba games are 128 mega-bits I think, which is smaller than a megabyte. Maybe someone can elaborate on that because I don't know specifics.

To convert from megabits to megabytes, divide by 8. 128 megabits would be 16 megabytes.

yep ... 8 bits per byte

I still can't think of a situation that would call for 2 screens individually. Why can't you just split a screen in half if you really want 2 different perspectives? Also it seems like it would be very disorienting switching perspectives between 2 screens. Like how would you be in 1st person on one screen and 3rd person on the other and still maintain control? Perceptually it doesn't seem like a smooth transition.

I'm guessing you can have better graphcs that way, as you it has two processors, one for each screen.

Maybe there wasn't a way to do that with a split screen, and using only one processor would have been taxing?

As for control, you couldn't really go back and forth instantly.

In your example, you could shoot everything in a room looking at the first person screen, and then when you need to make some platform jumps, you stop for a second and look over and start playing on the third person screen.

There's a lot of neat possibilities here IMO.

There really is a lot of room for creativity here. My only concern is the actual screen sizes (a little bigger would be better). Driving games would be nice on two screens as would a Metroid/Zelda, a MGS/Splinter Cell and RPG's. Damn I want to see this thing.

quality control becomes more difficult with a larger screen *I think*. You get many more bad screens.

The two screen thing I think is gimmicky but could work. The main thing I am concerned is that this doesn't seem to be a successor to the GBA but just a neat little side platform. Like the Virtual boy.

i don't buy either the cost reason nor the quality control reason. displays are relatively cheap and quality is not really an issue for small displays.

having 2 displays and the required framing, wiring, perhaps movable hinges, would outweigh the cost of having a wider screen driven by one gpu.

2 displays is a paradigm shift that isn't going to be driven by cost issues or quality issues. it must be b/c nintendo thinks that that is an innovation that makes gaming more fun.

The perhaps I was right in saying the graphics would be taxed as one processor would be running boths screens, where as now there's a processor for both.

At any rate, I'm sure they had a purpose it's best to just wait and see.

Other than the virtual boy, Nintendo (IMO) has never put out a lame piece of hardware.