Well, I posted because I was excited to get one

Anyway, had a good run with the DS over the weekend.

Positives:

- Love the new screen resolution. Regular GBA games look so much better. More detail...just better.
- Battery Life is good. Played for a good bit over 3 days and didn't even get a red light.
- these have to be the best set of mini speakers I've heard on any portable device...and it beats many computer speakers I've listened to.
- Like the fact I can have a DS game along with a GBA game in at the same time and can decide which one I want to play once I turn it on.

Stuff I'm on the fence about

- I need better gameplay elements to justify the dual screen. Right now it just seems like something that up'd the unit up to 150. Although the only games I have right now are Mario & Madden. Seeing a map in game or seeing a formation before a play is OK, but in previous games I could just press start or press a button to view the entire field to access this stuff.

- I prefer the little light button of the SP to decide when I would like the light on or off. With the DS you have to go to it's startup menu, before you play a game, to disable the light. Slight nitpick, but when you're trying to save battery juice every little bit helps.

Deadpool, the resolution does not affect the way GBA games look. It's simple the type of screen used. The SP screen uses a reflective LCD with a front light, this washes the colors out quite a bit (it was one of the things I noted before I caved in and upgraded to the SP). The DS uses more-or-less a laptop type back-lit LCD, hence the cleaner looking colors.

The speakers ARE pretty damn good. I'm impressed.

Thanks for explanation Pixy. I don't have the time I used to to read up on this stuff. I no longer have a console but I will always need a handheld for subway rides and road trips. Chances are I will buy the PSP also

52 Stars, and unlocked all the mini-games 'cept one. Where are you?

Q: How do you use the touch screen in Mr. Driller? I don't have the game, I'm just curious.

25 or so Stars, only Mario unlocked, not sure how many mini-games. Haven't had much time for gaming the past week or 2, and Mario and Luigi GBA has been hogging my DS time.

BTW, how many mini-games are there in total?

Josh, I think there are 9 per character.. so that's 36.

Mario & Luigi does rock though.

Yes it does.

Cool, I still have a lot of rabbits to catch then.

In just experimenting with the touch screen (ie: not really reading the instructions or digging deeper to see if there are other configurations), it seemed like the touch screen allowed you to move Mr. Driller and that's it. Because Mr. Driller is on the touch screen itself, using the thumb pad obscures your view. Still much easier using the regular method, in my opinion. Of course, I haven't played it in a couple of days (FF1and2 are taking up all of my time).

If you had told the hugely sceptical audiences who saw the Nintendo DS for the first time at E3 last May that in a little over six months, the Japanese firm would have sold 1.2 million units of the system in not much more than a fortnight and would be cheerfully raising its estimates for the rest of the year to around 2.8 million, most of them would probably have considered you to be some kind of madman. Yet even with the shadow of PlayStation Portable looming large, that's exactly what has happened in the past few weeks.

Nintendo DS has had successful launches in both North America (700,000 units to date) and Japan (over half a million units to date), rivalling the launch figures of the Game Boy Advance in 2001 and surprising a legion of naysayers who dismissed the console's dual screens and touch panel as nothing more than a gimmick. Today saw the shipment estimates for the rest of the year rising by 40 per cent, with an additional 400,000 units apiece promised to North America and Japan. For a product which Nintendo president Satoru Iwata humbly said would be considered a success if even ten per cent of the company's customers understood it, it's not a bad start.

By contrast, manufacturing volumes will mean that Sony will be lucky to have half a million units of the PlayStation Portable on shelves in Japan by the end of the year, and North America and Europe will have to wait for several months before they see the console. Dogged by concerns about poor battery life and a possible downgrade of its screen quality in order to reduce Sony's losses on hardware manufacturing, it's hardly a stellar launch for a console whose very existence caused Nintendo's share price to drop by more than 10 per cent when Ken Kutaragi announced it at E3 two years ago.

Of course, none of this is to say that the next-gen handheld war is in any way decided as yet. Sony's console still has incredible inertia behind it, a range of big-name software, an attractive design, and most importantly, the all-powerful PlayStation name - albeit looking a touch tarnished since its bruising encounter with the home media market in Japan, where the PSX system remains something of an embarrassment to Sony. It's easy to develop for, and so similar to the PS2 that publishers will be able to port much of their existing portfolio with ease - and undoubtedly will, infuriating hardcore gamers but appealing massively to the existing fanbases of the major franchises.

It's interesting, however, to look at just how much inertia Nintendo has managed to build up since E3. Six months ago, a successful launch for the DS seemed highly unlikely, and the words "Virtual Boy" weren't far from the lips of many snide commentators. In that six months, however, Nintendo seems to have had a change of heart about how to market the product, how to talk about it, how to approach the market aggressively - and even about what market it's really chasing.

The Nintendo we see now isn't the Nintendo that launched the GameCube, or even the Game Boy Advance. It's a Nintendo where president Satoru Iwata is happy to slam his competitor's products for their failings, and where his underlings wryly comment on the PSP's rumoured battery life flaws in front of assembled legions of the press. It's a Nintendo which markets its products to adults, which has learned how to convey the essence of a new console in a simple soundbite - Touch! - and which isn't afraid to market itself on its strengths to both its existing audience, but more importantly, to a huge audience that doesn't even play videogames. Not yet, anyway.

It's easy to look derisively at comments from Iwata-san about how the DS can appeal to people outside the current gaming demographic, by interesting them with control systems they're more familiar with than the analogue stick or D-pad, but doing so misses a fundamental point - namely that he's right. The success of games such as Eye Toy, SingStar and Dance Dance Revolution proves beyond any doubt that there is a market out there that doesn't want to hold a joypad, but is still happy to play games as long as they aren't forced through a learning curve involving oddly labelled buttons and difficult to manipulate control sticks. The problem is working out how to reach those people and tell them about new products - and it's a problem which Nintendo seems to believe it can crack.

If the company which gave us the D-Pad and the console analogue controller in the first place is right, its most enduring creations need to be cast aside to appeal to a broader marketplace. If it can reach that audience, and if it can maintain its current aggressive, intelligent and far-sighted approach to the market, then that's good news for the industry as a whole - and a worrying reminder to both Sony and Microsoft that neither of them is in a two-horse race just yet.


Chris

Is it possible to get one of these things anywhere?

No.

Check places that don't have a large selection of video games like Target or K-Mart. I still see them at those kind of stores, but not at Best Buy or EBgames.

I have.


I am sadly coming to the realisation that PixyJunket is correct. Thought there might be some online places to check out.

I took a friend of mine to get one last week.. we tried Target, a sure-fire win.. the guy said they got a shipment of 14 that morning and had more than that waiting at the door for one at opening. Even places that usually have hidden gems like Sears were cleaned dry!

Huh, I saw about 10 of the at my local target yesterday.

Just ask your local stores when they're expecting more, and stop by that afternoon. You'll eventually land one.

Well, I'm in Dallas.. that may have something to do with it. I don't know.. just telling it like I see it.

Obviously they're going to sell faster in metropolitan areas.

I was in West Virginia at my parents during launch, and had no problem finding one and saw them all over up to a week after launch when I left.

Since I've been back home (DC/Balto area) I've not seen any in Best Buy, Target or Wal-mart.

My wife called me downstairs last night to watch a Tivo'd Live w/ Regis & Kelly. They had a gadget dude I recognized who was showing off the DS. He said that the DS was THE hot item of Xmas (over the ipod and Kodak EZ share cameras). Good to see positive exposure...and Kelly with a DS.

here's my good deed for the year....

in stock now at circuitcity.com

hurry while they last

Tried about an hour ago, but no luck.

Thanks anyway.

I picked one up at the Fremont California BestBuy on Wednesday. They had nothing out on the shelves but the guy told me to ask the guy in the yellow shirt at the front (the guy who checks receipts). He opened a locked room, pulled one out and set it at a register for me. Make sure you ask...

From CNet:

Recent reports out of Japan indicate that Ridge Racers (the top rated launch game) will get 6 hours of gameplay on one full battery charge. Is it really that close, or is CNet way below average?

that's an interesting question. My friends DS has been getting about 10 hours, 7 hours with wifi play, what conditions was CNET's test down under? Was Ridge Racers played online? I don't think it was, that can be a major battery drainer.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Nintendo_DS/...2.html?tag=top

And no, that would be Ridge Racers without WiFi on. I thought that you couldn't turn the WiFi off on the DS?