.FLYINGHEAD FIRST LOOK
.TITLE A first look at the Nintendo DS and Playstation Portable
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY At this week’s E3, we had correspondents on the floor at E3, reporting back on the two biggest announcements relevant to Computing Unplugged readers: the new Nintendo DS and Playstation Portable devices. This article has the details.
.FEATURE
There are only a few trade shows where I’m categorically not permitted to attend. Among them are CES (the Consumer Electronics Show), AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo, and E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo), which is currently going on right now. In each of these cases, I just can’t be trusted not to fall in love and bring too many goodies home with me.
Fortunately, we had correspondents on the floor at E3, reporting back on the two biggest announcements relevant to Computing Unplugged readers: the new Nintendo DS and Playstation Portable devices, shown in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A Here you can see the Nintendo DS and Playstation Portable. Get out yer VISA, Marge!
.H1 The Nintendo DS
The Nintendo DS (which stands for dual screen) is notable because it has, uh, dual screens. In addition to the second screen, the DS has touch-screen input, voice recognition and wireless communication.
Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo unveiled the highly anticipated Nintendo DS in Hollywood, as shown in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B It’s always fun to watch the formal announcements. Thanks to Bob Riha, Jr. for the excellent photo.
Nintendo tell us why these features are important:
.QUOTE Two screens offer two perspectives on the action at once. The touch screen could make accessing items, moving characters or navigating menus as easy as a tap or drag on the screen. Voice recognition could let players simply tell the game what they want it to do. Chat software will let users transmit text messages, handwriting and even drawings to one another. And wireless functions could link players in the same room or across the country.
There’s still a lot that hasn’t been answered, but so far, we know the device will offer two slots and 802.11 WiFi (although Nintendo hasn’t specified which 802.11 they’re using and claims to be using their own specific protocol).
.BREAK_EMAIL Read more about these two new devices. Tap your mouse here to learn more.
The benefits of the dual screen include:
.QUOTE In a racing game, drivers might see their own vehicle’s perspective on one screen and an overall track view on the other. In a role-playing game, the action could take place on the first screen while the second provides a reference for a player’s tools inventory. Game play also could use both screens at once, offering a giant boss for heroes to defeat. In the future, games could be created allowing users to play games on one screen while text messaging other DS users on the other.
Nintendo is claiming that their touch screen moves the device into the PDA world, allowing users to do PDA-like things, including writing on the lower screen (which itself has a tougher film cover), as shown in Figure C.
.FIGPAIR C Is it a GameBoy or a Palm? You be the judge.
The device is also scheduled to have a microphone for "future" chatting and in-game conversations and a new semiconductor media they claim can hold up to a gigabit (pinch me, we’re talking 128M) of information.
With the newly developed graphics engine, Nintendo claims the DS can reproduce impressive 3-D renderings that can surpass images displayed on the Nintendo 64. Games will run at 60 frames per second, and allow details like fog effects and cel shading. The 16-channel sound allows for greatly expanded use of voices and music, and a richer, more immersive game experience. A plug for headphones transmits stereo sound.
"When Nintendo came down and presented the DS platform to us, I think everyone was in shock," says Will Kassoy, Activision’s vice president of global brand management. "It was amazing. Our technical guys were drooling at the abilities and wanting so much to dive into programming for the system."
The only problem is, it’ll take a while for anyone to do much with the system. Pricing, availability, and even it’s official name will be announced some time into the future.
That said, more than 100 companies worldwide have received software development kits and are planning games for Nintendo DS. Games in development by Nintendo include a new Super Mario game, a Metroid game, a WarioWare game and PictoChat, software that lets players send instant text and picture messages. Third-party publishers also have announced games in development, including a Spider-Man 2 title from Activision, a Rayman game from Ubisoft, a SpongeBob SquarePants title from THQ, a Yu-Gi-Oh! game from Konami, a Sonic title from Sega, a Bomberman game from Hudson Soft, a Need for Speed game from Electronic Arts and a Pac-Man title from Namco.
In the meantime, while you’re waiting for your SpongeBob fix, you’ll have to content yourself with some very, very short videos. You can find them at the end of this article.
.H1 The Playstation Portable (PSP)
Next up on our hit parade is the Playstation Portable, shown in Figure D, which promises to be all things to all people, and yet is still, first and foremost, a gaming platform.
.FIGPAIR D The PlayStation Portable can’t yet run the game shown here.
To be clear, the PSP is a very different beast from the Nintendo DS. The PSP with a 16:9 widescreen TFT (Thin Film Transistor) LCD centered in the unit. The 16:9 aspect ratio, of course, is the ideal aspect ratio for movies, a fact that was obliquely referenced in the press materials.
The dimensions are 170mm x 74mm x 23mm with a weight of 260g (for those of us in America who don’t "do" metric, just look at the pretty pictures and you’ll see the approximate size). The display is full color (16.77 million colors), showing on a 480 x 272 pixel high-resolution screen. That’s pretty impressive for a gaming unit. It also comes complete with the basic functions of a portable player such as built-in stereo speakers, exterior headphone connector, brightness control and sound mode selection. Keys and controls inherit the same operability of PlayStation and PlayStation 2.
Sony tells us that the PSP also comes equipped with input/output connectors such as USB 2.0, and 802.11b (Wi-Fi) wireless LAN, providing connectivity to various devices in the home and to the wireless network outside.
In addition, software and data can be downloaded through a USB or wireless network onto Memory Stick PRO Duo. Of course, we all were hoping Sony would drop the Memory Stick format, but obviously, that’s not to be. Hopefully, with lots of these units likely to be in circulation, the "no one cares so it costs more" premium charged for Memory Stick cards will go down once this device ships.
And, because the world always needs another proprietary, restrictive storage format, the PSP uses a small, but high-capacity optical medium called UMD (Universal Media Disc), "enabling game software, rich with full-motion video and other forms of digital entertainment content, to be stored." The newly developed UMD, shown in Figure E, is only 60mm in diameter but can store up to 1.8GB of digital data.
.FIGPAIR E Want your Fair Use rights trampled upon once again? Support the UMD format.
Accoding to Sony, "A broad range of digital entertainment content such as music video clips, movies and sports programs can be provided on UMD." To protect this entertainment content (and insure that the purchasing public again has their Fair Use rights trampled upon, "A robust copyright protection system has been developed which utilizes a combination of a unique disc ID, a 128 bit AES encryption keys for the media, and individual ID for each PSP hardware unit." Yeah, it’ll be cracked in about three weeks by yet another engineering student with too little social life and disposable cash.
Like the Nintendo DS, this is a very early showing for this device. There were no playable games demoed on the floor, and only a limited amount of interactivity at all (mostly limited to watching the in-game camera move).
Likewise, pricing hasn’t been discussed, although the company tells us the device is due to be released in Japan at the end of this year, and sometime in early 2005 for the U.S. market. This means that the device is likely to be released in mid-2005 in Japan and somewhere near the end of 2005 for the U.S. market.
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Personally, I’m thinking I can probably duct tape a small USB hard drive to the back and make it into my own personal rolling DMCA violation machine. Actually, to be honest, I’m really not all that excited by either of these devices. I think I’d be far, far more turned on by a Pocket PC or Palm with a small hard drive than I ever would by one of these toys.
Time will tell. I didn’t think I’d be hot for my Xbox and now (after it’s been heavily hacked), you can have it only after you’ve pried it from my cold, dead hands.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on the Nintendo DS, visit http://www.nintendo.com/e3_2004/ds/index.jsp
For a DS hardware video (big), visit http://www.nintendo.com/e3_2004/ds/video_ds_hardware_480.jsp.
For a DS software video (big), visit http://www.nintendo.com/e3_2004/ds/video_ds_software_480.jsp
For a DS "technical" (not really) demo video (big), visit http://www.nintendo.com/e3_2004/ds/video_ds_techdemo_480.jsp
For more information on the PSP, visit http://www.us.playstation.com/pressreleases.aspx?id=207.
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.BIO
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