Segueing nicely from the downloadable music moral wars, the latest Nintendo DS incarnation was announced, the DSi, and a few of its touted new features is MP3/AAC playback and the DS version of Shop Channel (oh, it also comes with on-board memory and an SD slot).

I'm hardly an expert and don't forecast anything with a shred of certainty or credibility, but having been following the gamemp3s thread, a point that came to my mind is that the music industry has to keep up with technology in order to continue to thrive, and it has done so with the various forms of online music stores selling legal downloads. Call me overly optimistic, but perhaps Nintendo might consider promoting their "hot" new feature by selling music download themselves--drawing from their own music library. Given how Nintendo music is frequently acclaimed yet infrequently pressed to disc, this might be a hot selling point for music lovers and a profitable avenue for Nintendo to explore.

Don't mind me, just thinking out loud.

While interesting, I wouldn't enjoy carrying around my DS just to listen to music. I assume that would be the only way to play anything from the shop (i.e. DRMed to run only on the DS).

What I take most notice of is the fact that there's two touchscreens now. If Nintendo starts making some DSi-exclusive games to use both, I'm goiong to be flat-out disgusted.

What DS must have is an anti-fingerprint body.

I'm curious how what the official site says about DSi sound is possible ; we can repeat the specific phrase of melodies, and mute only the vocal section of songs.

Typically when sound is played in games its played over a series of fixed channels which are then mixed to create the final sound that comes out the speakers. I assume the DS could give you the option to turn off specific channels (like the channel where vocals are played on) so that anything coming into them does not get mixed. Haven't done any work with the DS, so I'm not sure how the audio programming on it works.

Only one touchscreen.

I still think the DSi is bullshit, though.

Ah, good to know. Certainly if that's not an issue, I'm hard-pressed to care about the device. No GBA port, no sale.

Which is the exact same attitude I will hold until a download-only game is made using one of my favorite licenses.

Although I guess pirates are going to be pretty eager to see what they can do with the DSi....

It's easy when the song is sequenced by the DS, but the official site says DS can handle even an ordinary AAC file which has to have only 2 channels (stereo). 

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/dsi.html

I'm sorry if I'm writing something stupid.

First of all just gotta say did I call this or what?

I didn't read through the site so closely but I figure it'll be similar to a plain old wave editor where you can view the waveform, then mark areas to repeat, cut, etc.  And the mute vocals feature will probably be similar to the one in various hardware and software audio players - a feature that never really works.

I think the GBA slot is worth the tradeoff for the thinner body and the ability to download multiple games and carry them in internal storage.  This is coming from someone with only two GBA games though, neither of which I really care to play again.

As for the "game music channel" idea, I was just thinking about this a few days ago for Wii, and if Nintendo had the balls to refuse DRM I think it'd really work.  You could have an in-game feature to cue the current game's album or current stage's BGM track to order the next time you enter the music channel.  Cool stuff and a good opportunity to really boost VGM sales.

Virtual Boot, any qualms with me altering the title a bit to make this a general DSi discussion?  If so, no worries

No qualms at all; I only focused on the music portion to prevent myself from stewing about the onboard memory and downloadable games, which I'd be all for if it didn't create the problem of having DS games that only a DSi can play.

2x Bonus Points Activated

Two words: bigger screens.

http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa28 … sonbig.jpg

Although comparatively speaking, it's not really that big of a difference, at least not from what the pic shows.  The other features aside, the screens would be the deciding factor as to whether or not I'd want to get one.  At the very least, I won't be importing this time.

Nintendo is definitely taking the Apple product development cycle strategy now.  The DSi is indeed intriguing to me.

Lame. Stephen is right - this is very similar to what Apple does with their iPod and iPhone releases. Planned obsolescence, my friends!

Not to mention the repercussions of not being able to play certain DS games or use peripherals without Slot 2.  Guitar Hero On Tour, the Daigasso! Band Brothers Tsuika Kyoku cartridge, Arkanoid's "paddle" controller, the rumble pak....

Well, considering Nintendo told very few third-party developers about the Wii Motion Plus adapter, I think the same thing has happened here.  Guitar Hero On Tour sold quite well, so I wonder if Activision Blizzard is upset.

The other factor is that now that Nintendo is going after the mainstream, they may consider games not having a long shelf life anymore.  This would be a disposable mentality.

The biggest news there was Punch Out and Club Nintendo coming to the US.

DSi looks ok, but I probably won't get excited about it unless some neat download-only games start getting announced.

I wonder whether Virtual Console games will be playable on the DS.  If so, I suspect that Nintendo will force you to buy a Virtual Console game twice if you want to play it on both Wii and DS.

Oh, I'd be pretty certain of that.

The crappy camera (most phones have a better camera than that) and mp3 player don't interest me whatsoever (what happened to, you know, games?). That the battery life is severely reduced and yet the machine seems to be larger in two dimensions seems nuts to me. Improve a handheld=make it smaller and give it better battery life. At least that's how I'd see it.

But the download service could turn out to be really interesting if it amounts to more than just NES games that we've already rebought a thousand times. The VC and Wii Ware has turned out to be pretty great in my opinion and having a handheld equivalent could be really good.

I'm pretty sure that from the pictures it's actually slightly smaller in all directions.

Apparently the DSi is 137 millimeters by 74.9mm by 18.9mm and the DS is 133mm by 73.9mm by 21.5mm. Overall, that makes the DSi smaller in mass and weight (which is good) but makes it higher and longer. Bigger in two dimensions.

With everyone loving the retro craze, this could be a new catch-phrase!
Similar to being "Big in Japan" the equivalent is now being "Big in 2-D" haha

The cameras will be pretty useless (for megapixel cell phone toting Japanese in particular) unless they find some clever ways to integrate in with games.  And the audio player is just to put it on even ground feature-wise with the PSP - neither are small enough to use as one's primary portable audio player.

The download capability, flash memory and SD slot are the features with substance.  For those of us without an iPhone or iPod touch, it'll be nice to have access to the web browser and other PDA-like apps (hopefully the Japanese dictionary!) without having to carry and swap cartridges.

Hopefully Nintendo will be smart enough to let users share VC games between a Wii console and a DS.  There's no way people are gonna double-dip for emulated games.

Er, isn't it the exact opposite? Traditional games for traditional gamers have a very short shelf life, usually 3 months at most, and in the very worst cases, only a week or a month. There are a few core gamer series that keep selling longer, but when compared to that mainstream, the expanded audience of games like Wii Sports, Brain Training, Wii Fit, and outside Nintendo, games like Big Beach Sports, Petz and The Sims, those games just keep selling and selling even if they didn't manage million seller megahits on the first week or the first month. The expanded audience keep buying games that interest them long after release, while the traditional core audience seems to lose interest in anything older than a month, or at best buys them as used or budget editions.

That Guitar Hero DS 2 that's coming sometime before the DSi will still have all those millions of original DS owners to sell to. This only means that the series can't be continued if the DSi eventually succeeds its predecessor... unless there's some other way to plug in accessories.

A good idea, since Nintendo has just announced regional lockouts: http://www.dsfanboy.com/2008/10/06/nint … on-locked/

Oh, and apparently you won't be able to share Points between your Wii and your DSi, and have to buy them seperately. Stupid.

Yes, very.  I also wonder how Nintendo will handle DRM here.  On the console side, it's one thing to keep downloadable content locked to a particular system since you're probably not going to buy another one unless yours breaks (and then you have to send to Nintendo to give you credit for the points, but that's a whole other story), but part of Nintendo's portable strategy is to get the same people to buy multiple versions of the same hardware.  If I buy a DSi and download a bunch of games for it and Nintendo makes a DSi+, I'd sure like to be able to play the games I downloaded off of my original DSi, now wouldn't I?

1up.com's Justin Epperson has just written up a direct comparison between the original DS, the DS Lite, and the new DSi:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171063

Also, Neogaf is taking apart the Japanese DSi warning manual.   Hilarity ensues:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=340769

those DSi Warning Manual manipulations are great.