Nintendo is making moves
It’s a little hard to overstate how completely Nintendo is dominating the gaming industry right now.
Sure, Microsoft and Sony (and even PC hardware makers) will benefit this holiday season from an impressive array of new games (“Gears of War 2,” “Mirror’s Edge,” “Fallout 3” are just a few), but if you look at what’s actually selling from month to month, Nintendo is regularly running the table not just with its juggernaut, the Wii, but also with its popular handheld, the DS.
Price cuts on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 won’t change the dynamics at this point, at least not this holiday season: Nintendo has found a way to tap a whole audience of non- and lost gamers.
But they’re not resting on their laurels. Some recent moves by Nintendo point to some interesting new areas the company is trying to cover. Last week, the company introduced the DSi, which it will launch November 1 in Japan. The device is similar to the Nintendo DS, but it adds two digital cameras (one on the outside, one facing the player) and the ability to play music. It also has upgraded wireless capabilities and an SD memory card slot. The slot and wireless are expected to usher in an era where gamers can download games directly to the device, using the SD card as storage.
The only thing missing is the old Game Boy Advance cartridge slot, which means you won’t be playing “Guitar Hero: On Tour” on this thing.
Not that you’ll be playing anything on it anytime soon: Nintendo said the DSi r4ds won’t hit North America until well into 2009. I wouldn’t expect to see it here until next summer at the earliest.
Nintendo has no reason to switch to a new handheld: the DS is still selling like gangbusters (at least in North America) over Sony’s more powerful PSP system. Though gamers were skeptical at first of the DS’s touch-screen capabilities and inferior hardware capabilities, great games more than made up for it.
The DSi boldly takes Nintendo to new places while keeping its popular DS brand viable. Nintendo has been pretty amazing about keeping its systems backward-compatible. Minus that Game Boy Advance slot, I imagine the new DS will allow gamers to download copies of retro games they might still want to play.