Nintendo DS

DS news by , published on Tuesday 11th May 2004

Thanks to USA Today, the first pics of the new Nintendo DS have surfaced. The product is being unveiled this morning at E3 to a gaggle of hungry journos.

As everyone knows, the DS comes with two screens, one of which is touch-sensitive and works with a stylus — like Palms and Pocket PCs — to control the action in some games. In one demo on display at E3, players guide a toddler-age Mario as he falls from the sky by drawing clouds. Other games give multiple views of the action.

The DS also has Bluetooth wireless communication to connect with other units within range for cordless competition, doing away with pesky cables, and the DS has separate slots for current Game Boy Advance cartridges and new, smaller DS game cards.

The DS is largely viewed as Nintendo’s response to Sony’s PlayStation Portable, or PSP, a new system that will play both movies and video games stored on mini DVD discs (known as UMD - Universal Media Discs). Sony has announced plans to release PSP in Japan later this year and in the USA in 2005.

So, having sold more than 168 million Game Boys worldwide since 1989, Nintendo still dominates the handheld game market, even if it has lost a major market share in console systems to Sony and Microsoft. Over the decade or so, Sega, NEC, SNK and most recently cell phone giant Nokia have launched nine competing portable game systems without much success. Can Sony’s PSP match this, or is the DS a waste of time?

Only time will tell.