Nintendo DS 2 Now Being Tested by Developers?
Secretive game developer says next Nintendo 'DS' to have a tilt sensor, like the iPhone.
Despite the massive installed base for the Nintendo DS, progress is inevitable and the games company has reported delivered early development kits that are targeted to the next-generation portable machine.
CVG calls it the DS2 – a name that is likely to change – and reports that a handful of select developers in Japan have the trial kits from Nintendo. The largest of the bunch is supposedly the Pokemon Company, which would make sense given that the Pokemon franchise is absolutely gangbusters on all Nintendo portable systems.
While it's natural that the new platform will have better graphics and sound, the real standout feature is the supposed addition of a tilt motion sensor – similar to that of an iPhone.
"It's genuinely the best thing I think I've ever worked with," said the source. "I can tell you that it's got a 'tilt' function that's not dissimilar to iPhone, but does a lot more. We know that The Pokemon Company are getting special attention with it."
This is the first we've heard that the DS successor would have a motion sensor. Nintendo Japan president Satoru Iwata was quoted as saying that the next portable would have "highly detailed graphics, and it will be necessary to have a sensor with the ability to read the movements of people playing." That validity of that quote, however, was later contested by Nintendo.
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i must have my pokemans!!!
Enough with the DS, I want HD Wii!!!
I hope they don't eff it up, and I really hope they are putting good hardware in it. Better media capabilities would be nice too, though I doubt they will rival the iphone/ipod touch. As a personal media player I think the ipod touch has a good lead over Nintendo/Sony.
Cool! Now they can make a Warioware Tilt game!
Oh wait...
Lets just hope that they don't try and integrate clunky motion controls into games that don't need it!
Finally an improved Pokémon game!
I absolutely love my DS lite. It's great for when I want to kill time and it's too noisy to read. I bought Mass Effect 2 and Zelda: Spirit Tracks the same day and I've yet to open ME2 because I've been busy playing spirit tracks during my free time.
I just hope the DS2 is backwards compatible with the DS games. Based on the DS and DS lite having a GBA slot I don't think its an unreasonable hope.
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I absolutely love my DS lite. It's great for when I want to kill time and it's too noisy to read. I bought Mass Effect 2 and Zelda: Spirit Tracks the same day and I've yet to open ME2 because I've been busy playing spirit tracks during my free time.
Stop whatever you're doing right now, and pop in ME2. Honestly, you're missing out on the greatest gaming experience of 2010 (and future).
Another flood of games coming soon?
Nintendo systems don't have long shelf lives anymore. They have a lot of sales in the beginning but always slow down. So they have to make a new system. I like the way Sony and Microsoft is doing. Longer life in between systems.
m-manla@ what are you talking about? the ds has been around since early 2005, thats longer than the psp. sure they've made a few diferent versions but so has sony..
If the name "Nintendo DS 2" is not official, don't use it in the title.
My wish list is to have one big screen that is also touch (ditch duo screens). Thinking PSP size screen and also non-glossy screen if possible.
I want the name "wii" to die out and be forgotten. wii sounds like I'm playing with my penis. They should call their next console the Nintendo Revolution. Sure, it may be a pain the the arse to pronounce in other languages, but Sony has dealt with it just fine. I bet that "playstation" is a pain to pronounce for some people too.
When it comes to what the handheld will pack inside of it, I really hope Nintendo gets over their worry of RAM prices, and pack a lot more into it than they've had a bad habit of putting into their prior handhelds and consoles. The fact that the DSi jumped up from 4MB to 16MB I take as a good sign for the future; perhaps it might not be unreasonable to hope for as much as 64-128MB of RAM, which would be plenty for almost all applications if they were written right.
Processor-wise, they don't really need as much improvement as many might think. After all, the PSP's 222MHz CPU has proven fine enough to get far more advanced games than the 400-600MHz CPUs found in smartphones. (granted, the PSP uses a MIPS-architecture design, being more capable per-clock than an ARM) However, the DS2 could perhaps do with a dedicated hardware GPU, rather than relying on the CPU.
Nintendo systems don't have long shelf lives anymore. They have a lot of sales in the beginning but always slow down. So they have to make a new system. I like the way Sony and Microsoft is doing. Longer life in between systems.
Sony and Microsoft's consoles have had no longer life than Nintendo's; contrary to what has been claimed, the lifespan of a console has, up to this point, remained 4-6 years; claims that they've held out longer have been as fabricated as their power claims. (just for those interested, the actual combined CPU+GPU floating-point power of the Xbox 360 and PS3 are, respectively, 43.2 and 212 GFlops... Misleading figures that have little bearing on their capability for gaming, too)
Historically, a new generation of consoles has come around close to every 5th year; this pattern was started by Nintendo with the NES in 1985, followed by the SNES in 1991, the N64 in 1996, the Game Cube in 2001, and the Wii in 2006. Sega did the same, with the Master System in 1985, the Genesis in 1989, the Saturn in 1994, and the Dreamcast in 1999. Microsoft actually went a bit quick, as the Xbox came out in 2001, and was tossed aside by the 360 in 2005. Sony has followed suit as well; the PS1 came out in 1995, and the PS2 in 2000. The longest gap for them was 6 years for the PS3 in 2006, forgivable due to its wild success.
As far as handhelds go, the cycle seems to have gotten a little quicker, if we consider the DSi and DS two different handhelds; the Game Boy had a long shelf life from 1989 to 1998, when the Game Boy Color displaced it. Then the Game Boy Advance in 2001, the DS in 2004, and the DSi in 2008.
Not just a tilt sensor; an accelerometer and probably gyroscope (like the Wii MotionPlus).