Nintendo Press Conference 2008 Updates

[Julius Seeker]

-DSi, covered in another thread: essentially an even thinner DS Lite(r), 2 touch screens, internal storage, SD slot, mp3 player, 3 mp camera, sound and graphics editing software, browser and online capabilities.
-DSware was announced, the DS version of WiiWare/CV, title costs will be free, 200, 500, and 800 points.
-Storage sollution for Wii (FINALLY!)- Opening up the SD card for direct usage.
-Sin and Punishment 2 for the Wii
-Punch Out! for the Wii
-a New Final Fantasy CC game for the DS, but interacts with the Wii,
-A number of other games for Wii and DS were shown in video form.

[Lox]

Punch out!!!!! Woooooo!

[Shellie]

, 3 mp camera

.3 not 3 I expected it to have a better camera than that...at least 1MP would have been nice.

[Zeus]

Link for anyone who wants it

http://wii.ign.com/articles/915/915504p1.html

- 0.3MP? That's fucking stupid. You can buy a keychain camera with 1MP for like $10. Cheap and unnecessarily useless. But I do very much like the dual touch screen, just don't know much it's going to be used this particular generation (would be splitting the DS userbase which Nintendo does not like to do very much). And I really like the idea of the smaller downloads directly onto the DS. It would be great if they opened up the VC stuff to be downloaded directly to the DS to play on the go, at least the NES and SNES games

- it's about fucking time they opened up the SD slot

- Sin and Punishment 2: oh hell yeah!

- Punch Out: yeah, that'll be good too

EDIT: I ain't so sure about this "Let's Play on Wii" line.....sounds like they're just taking GC games and updating them to the Wii with updated controls; essentially they're RE4 Wii-like releases (and undoubtedly inspired by the insane success of that title). Cheap way to "expand" your library IMO. Here's a list of already announced titles

http://wii.ign.com/articles/915/915529p1.html

EDIT 2: this is what Sin and Punishment will look like? Very pretty. If it's close to the quality of the old one, I'm there
http://media.wii.ign.com/articles/915/9 ... mgs_1.html

Another Code R is a Trace Memory game? Nice, I really liked that game. Very underrated IMO

[Julius Seeker]

The internal camera is 0.3 megapixels, the external camera is 3 megapixels.

[Zeus]

The internal camera is 0.3 megapixels, the external camera is 3 megapixels.

Link? Not mentioned in the official specs

http://ds.ign.com/articles/915/915510p1.html

EDIT: Never mind, I found it

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6198455.ht ... op;story;1

That's a lot better. At least it's useful now

[Zeus]

And no love for Mario & Luigi 3?

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3170306

This was the 3rd site I visited before I found out about that game. That's a great series

[Julius Seeker]

Sorry, it was a misprint on Wikipedia. It has been corrected. It is two VGA cameras.

[Zeus]

Sorry, it was a misprint on Wikipedia. It has been corrected. It is two VGA cameras.

Yeah, it's like they built in that one that came with Face Training for the inside of the system and put a cellphone-like 3MP one for the outside. Not a bad idea with the SD storage all there but I'm not so sure it's going to be something too many people use (outside camera for non-gaming functions)

[Julius Seeker]

-Wii Speak channel - voice mail, voice chat room, etc...
-Wii supplies will be significantly higher this holiday season than last year.
-Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (for the DS)
-Mario and Luigi RPG (DS)
-Personal Trainer series (DS)
-Club Nintendo for North America

[Zeus]

-Wii Speak channel - voice mail, voice chat room, etc...
-Wii supplies will be significantly higher this holiday season than last year.
-Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (for the DS)
-Mario and Luigi RPG (DS)
-Personal Trainer series (DS)
-Club Nintendo for North America

If the Wii Speak channel can't work in conjunction with a game, who cares? If it's just a lobby it doesn't solve the biggest issue with their online gaming "strategy"

FINALLY! But if those mother fuckers don't give me Club Nintendo points for the 70 games and every system (save for the Micro; I haven't opened the 20th anniversary Famicom one) I already have registered with them, I'm going to send them a bag full of my shit which will ignite the second they open it.

[bovine]

-Club Nintendo for North America

I'm with Zeus, this is a huge deal to me.

[Zeus]

-Club Nintendo for North America

I'm with Zeus, this is a huge deal to me.

I've been salivating over the shit Japan gets for a LONG time. Particularly considering how many things I have registered, I probably would have been able to get everything I wanted. They've had Famicon-themed GC controllers and some neat Classic NES GBA games stuff, amongst other stuff I can't recall right now, which was great for the Nintendo fan and collector.

I just hope we get the swag and it's not just "trade them in for points to use at the Wii or DS shop" stuff. And it would really be a kick to the groin of the Nintendo fan if they don't give at least something for previously registered stuff. They can use the excuse that "oh, well, we've already given free stuff for that" but if you look at what we've got, other than the Zelda collection (which was a kick-ASS freebie), we haven't gotten much. Just some styluses (I do like the feather stylus for Phantom Hourglass) and small dinky stuff which was game-specific. I'll even live with, say, half points for previously registered stuff as it'll include my GBA and GC stuff. But nothing? I'll be mighty pissed if that happens.

[Julius Seeker]

Hopefully they'll have something similar to Europe as well, free points for VC/WiiWare/DSware, I am an addict =P

[SineSwiper]

So, they had a SD card slot and you couldn't use it?! I understand how some systems get these extra ports that end up never being used, but COME ON!

[Julius Seeker]

Well you could, just not to play VC games directly off of. I am not sure why they took so long to unlock that feature though. Probably something they didn't think through when developing the OS for the system which wouldn't allow for direct interaction; though certain games (like Endless Ocean's music player) interacted fine with files stored on SD cards.

This was probably my most wanted feature for the Wii for the past year or so, since I filled up the internal drive.

[Julius Seeker]

DSi may be more than a year away; according to Nintendo the Japanese market is fairly saturated with DS Lite (1 in 2 Households) whereas the DS Lite in North America has only yet reached 1 in 5, the sales this year for DS Lite average 22-35% higher, depending on the month, from last year. That is the main reason. They have a lot of DS Lite units for release this Christmas. Speaking of holiday season sales, they are expecting Wii to shatter records this year, and this time they will have the units available to make this happen.

The games coming out this year look particularly interesting. Check Out gametrailers.com for the DS and Wii reels for upcoming games. Sin and Punishment 2 is one that I will buy off the shelf, I wanted an update to the original game for Wii controls, but this is the most I could have asked for =)

[Julius Seeker]

- Nintendo has officially announced Nintendo DSi, which will be released in Japan on November 1, 2008, for 18900 yen (US$179). The new model numerous new features and changes:

3.25" LCD display, 17% larger than NDS Lite
3 megapixel exterior camera, lower resolution interior camera
new SD memory card slot for playing back music, images, downloadable content
removal of the GBA cart slot
built-in internet browser and built-in Nintendo Zone internet information service
built-in music player
chassis is 2.6mm or 12% less than NDS Lite


- Nintendo also confirmed a number of new services for NDSi:

The virtual money "Wii Points" used by Nintendo's Internet service will be renamed to "Nintendo Points", you can use Nintendo Points on Wii and DSi
Nintendo will launch a new NDSi online shop to sell NDSiWare downloadable content
The NDSiWare price will be ranging from 200, 500 and 800 Nintendo points
First time NDSi users who visit the NDSi online store will receive 1000 Nintendo Points for free, offer ends March 2010.
Nintendo and McDonald will launch a new "Nintendo Zone" information network service
Nintendo Zone will be built-in to the NDSi, user can launch it without additional settings

That's from Magicbox. I am confused now, if the outer camera is VGA or 3mp. One thing that is certain is the interior camera is VGA.

[Zeus]

So, they had a SD card slot and you couldn't use it?! I understand how some systems get these extra ports that end up never being used, but COME ON!

No, no, it's not quite like that. You CAN use it but for storage only. You couldn't use it to basically add more HDD space. You couldn't play stuff directly off of it you could just use it as another place to store stuff. You'd have to move the VC game off of the SD card to play it. Now you don't. Fucking FINALLY.

Seek, external camera is definitely 3MP. The internal is the very low res one that's used for other purposes, like the built in face recognition and messing around software. I read it at Edge Online as well

[SineSwiper]

Seek, external camera is definitely 3MP. The internal is the very low res one that's used for other purposes, like the built in face recognition and messing around software. I read it at Edge Online as well

What is this external vs. internal camera thing?

Also, I think people are a little confused at the whole "megapixel" thing. A 640x480 picture (which is what the internal does) is 307K pixels, or 0.3MP. This is a 640x480 picture:



A 3MP camera would do a max of 2048 by 1536. That's bigger than my screen. Unless you going to be doing some cropping or "zooming" (which is just cropping), you don't need anything that large. People have been fooled by marketing with this "OMG!!!1! MEGAPIEXLS!!!11!!!!ONE!!!" bullshit since the term was introduced.

[Zeus]

There are two cameras on the DSi, one on the outside and another on the inside. The outside one is basically a cellphone camera with a 3MP lens. The inside one is basically a copy of the bundled one they had with the Face Training game in Japan. It's mean to take a pic of you and put it in the game or the DSi will have integrated software for you to mess around with (it's in some of the pics). Basically it has a normal camera and a games-specific camera

[Zeus]

Good news: there will be some level of backdating the points system for Club NIntendo in the US. It won't be everything but we won't be completely screwed

http://wii.ign.com/articles/915/915864p1.html

I say it's only the Wii and DS games you'll get credit for with the GBA and GC games you're SOL on.

[Julius Seeker]

Seek, external camera is definitely 3MP. The internal is the very low res one that's used for other purposes, like the built in face recognition and messing around software. I read it at Edge Online as well

What is this external vs. internal camera thing?

Also, I think people are a little confused at the whole "megapixel" thing. A 640x480 picture (which is what the internal does) is 307K pixels, or 0.3MP. This is a 640x480 picture:



A 3MP camera would do a max of 2048 by 1536. That's bigger than my screen. Unless you going to be doing some cropping or "zooming" (which is just cropping), you don't need anything that large. People have been fooled by marketing with this "OMG!!!1! MEGAPIEXLS!!!11!!!!ONE!!!" bullshit since the term was introduced.

You make a very good point here. Though I'm not confused, I know it is ridiculous to have a 5 megapixel camera for a phone with a QVGA screen and pictures that I might, at most, put into online photobucket or facebook format.