Nintendo aims for older crowd with DS

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Nintendo is overextending themselves with the DS

A lot of people I know are hyped about the DS. One of my friends works for a gaming chain (GameCrazy, owned by Hollywood Video) and they had one out for display and demo.

To be frank, I'm not impressed. It's cumbersome, gameplay with a stylus, even the thumbstrap stylus, is clumsy at best and graphically it doesn't have much to offer. The Game Boy Advance may have had SNES-type graphics, but given the length of time between the death of the SNES and the rise of the GBA, the GBA's graphics have decent retro appeal. The DS has graphics like an N64 and given that the death of the N64 wasn't too terribly long ago, it doesn't give off any real nostalgia.

The DS, in Nintendo's own words, is not a replacement for the GBA. The only reason it isn't is because it can't play old Gameboy and Gameboy Color game paks, but it CAN play GBA games.

So it's NOT a true successor to the GBA and the gameplay on it isn't very innovative or condusive for console style games. It comes with Pictochat and some other minor features that are more reminscant of something you'd get from a PDA instead of a handheld gaming system.

Ergo, I think Nintendo is overextending themselves. The handheld market was the ONLY place Nintendo was undefeated. But now that they have two handhelds in the market and will continue to support two handhelds, they open the door for Sony's PSP to come in steal the show.

The PSP might be more expensive, but it has Sony's name and reputation behind it which makes it far more of a threat than SNK, Atari or Sega ever could have been in the handheld world.

Somewhere I think a Nintendo Exec believed having two items in the market against one formidable competitor would give them some sort of edge in the market, but I have a gut feeling that this decision will come back to haunt Nintendo as bad as the decision they made to ditch their collaboration with Sony for their SNES cd-rom drive...

Posted by: wpritchett   Posted on: 11/21/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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