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[Jokeropia]

Seems like a good idea. The PSP is winning the handheld war in Japan right now, and the DS clearly needs a shot in the arm

Winning a few battles thanks to Monster Hunter ≠ winning the war. (The war ended like two years ago.)

 

[Deadly Monk]

Whoa, what if you could transfer your VC games to the new portable? Is that possible?

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

even if they did announce a new one who knows how long it would be until they were out in the real world.

For GBASP and DSL, the announcement->real-world time was less than two months. DSL did take longer to release worldwide, since Japan just wouldn't stop sucking up all the supply.

 

[HK-47]

Whoa, what if you could transfer your VC games to the new portable? Is that possible?

They would never allow it. Too paranoid about piracy

 

[NotWii]

They would never allow it. Too paranoid about piracy

If that were true, they wouldn't let you copy VC channels to SD Card...

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

If that were true, they wouldn't let you copy VC channels to SD Card...

The VC games are encoded so they're tied to that specific console. It might be possible to tie in a portable to one's existing VC account, but with as restrictive as they currently are I wouldn't count on it. If they were to do anything like this (or a VC equivalent on DS in general), I'm guessing it would just wait until the next portable rather than as a feature on DS Mach 3.

Whoa, what if you could transfer your VC games to the new portable? Is that possible?

There's also that each VC game is actually a Wii program, so that's not technically feasible. They'd need to bake up a copy of each game welded to a DS emulator separately, even if they did let you download it without extra cost.

 

[QuickKick89]

Which is a relevant response.

Not really. After all, car companies would love you to upgrade from the 08 model, but it just isn't financially feasible.

However, Nintendo and every other company knows that most game-o-philes are a very, very fickle bunch. They want the best of the best. So when they make a redesign, it's not just recommended you upgrade, its downright expected.

 

[loosus]

You know, a new Game Boy really probably is not overly far-fetched. The DS has the casual market cornered, yet PSP is still selling extremely, extremely well (especially in Japan, where it seems to have even outpaced DS recently).

So why let Sony have all that market to itself basically? Why not have a similar, media-focused Game Boy with PSP-like capabilities with Nintendo's big franchises? Minus the Nintendo franchises, Sony has shown that this market still has quite an appetite.

 

[Jokeropia]

Apart from Monster Hunter, PSP appears to be selling as a multimedia device more than a game player. (The tie-ratio is unprecedentedly low.) Assuming the majority of the people buying PSPs in Japan now don't already own a DS (which it seems likely that they do), I'm not sure that's a market Nintendo is even interested in.

 

[Dr.Acula]

If that were true, they wouldn't let you copy VC channels to SD Card...

The VC games are encoded so they're tied to that specific console. It might be possible to tie in a portable to one's existing VC account, but with as restrictive as they currently are I wouldn't count on it. If they were to do anything like this (or a VC equivalent on DS in general), I'm guessing it would just wait until the next portable rather than as a feature on DS Mach 3.

Whoa, what if you could transfer your VC games to the new portable? Is that possible?

There's also that each VC game is actually a Wii program, so that's not technically feasible. They'd need to bake up a copy of each game welded to a DS emulator separately, even if they did let you download it without extra cost.

Well my buddy can play games like SotN on his PS3 and his PSP, so I don't see why it'd be that big of an issue. The DS has an ID and so does the Wii, so if Nintendo is worried about piracy, they can always just check the sys ID of the DS, the same way they do with the Wii, so that only that specific DS can play VC games.

The main issue is that the DS doesn't have an internal drive to save VC games to.

 

[Brak]

You know, a new Game Boy really probably is not overly far-fetched. The DS has the casual market cornered, yet PSP is still selling extremely, extremely well (especially in Japan, where it seems to have even outpaced DS recently).

So why let Sony have all that market to itself basically? Why not have a similar, media-focused Game Boy with PSP-like capabilities with Nintendo's big franchises? Minus the Nintendo franchises, Sony has shown that this market still has quite an appetite.

The Gameboy name is dead dead dead.

Not going to happen.

 

[charlequin]

So why let Sony have all that market to itself basically?

Because you can only have one market -- so why go after the PSP's decent-sized one when they already have the goddamn ginormous DS one sewn up?

Getting mooney-eyed over your competitors' profits is a great way to fuck up and go out of business. Nintendo is rocking the party that rocks the body with the DS and any changes to that line of business should be based on internal maintenance of the brand, not reacting to what someone else is doing.