New Nintendo DS May Have GameCube-like Power

[Marcus Yam]

New DS to have screens closer together, acceleromator and the power of a GameCube... maybe.

New Nintendo DS May Have GameCube-like Power : Read more

 

[captaincharisma]

nintendo may have been milking the DS but Sony has Milked the PSP more and it still hasn't caught up to the DS.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

It would've been amazing to see the Tegra 2 in this thing, but unfortunately it looks like that was just a rumor. I've heard other more reliable sources lately (including this one) indicating that the DS2 will perform similarly to the GameCube, and will possibly be backwards compatible (making porting of old games simple). Whatever will be powering the DS2, it will more then likely be slower then the Tegra 2.

 

[Parsian]

when was the last time you saw Nintendo builds a "powerful" gaming system?

but then again, achieving game cube graphics is nothing so especial, Tegra can produce xbox quality graphics...

 

[gilbertfh]

If this came out around the end of the year it would be a real bust in the chops for all the people that purchased the DSi in the last year.

 

[Ramar]

To anyone not excited about this: Go play Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, or MGS on the cube. Yes, the Xbox could do bump mapping and the PS2 had particle effects down. Everything else though, the gamecube was better at.

 

[thepinkpanther]

make a flippin smash bros for gameboy darn it!

 

[eklipz330]

[citation][nom]gilbertfh[/nom]If this came out around the end of the year it would be a real bust in the chops for all the people that purchased the DSi in the last year.[/citation]

i can't believe im saying something good about gamestop but...

...if they offer the trade in ur dsi for ds2[or whatever], i might get on that

 

[megamanx00]

OOOOOoooo. Well, Nintendo isn't going to loose out graphically to the iPhone I guess. Perhaps we will see developers cater a little more towards the hard core gamer compared to the current DS. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

[Guest]

God, not another DS. The second screen is a useless gimmick. Just give us one big one.

 

[descendency]

So it should be able to play Wii games? Nintendo has a brilliant strategy! Unify their entire lineup so if you buy one game, you can play it on any system...

 

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]descendency[/nom]So it should be able to play Wii games? Nintendo has a brilliant strategy! Unify their entire lineup so if you buy one game, you can play it on any system...[/citation]
They wouldn't do that, they would lose too much money on games, that is basically cutting their actual game selling in half, and since most companies make most of their money from the game and not the system that would be bad for them.

 

[matt87_50]

wow...
I would hope it would have AT LEAST the power of a gamecube!

fyi, most of the new smart phones coming out are much more powerful than gamecube gen platforms. the ds2 should have more power than the wii...

 

[idisarmu]

[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]Sony has Milked the PSP more [/citation]

HOW? Sony has pretty much ignored the PSP. PS3 is at the forefront- blu-ray takes priority over the PSP for them.

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]Parsian[/nom]when was the last time you saw Nintendo builds a "powerful" gaming system?[/citation]
Well, there WAS the Nintendo64, the only known console to not be obsolete compared to PCs at release.

Though the main problem with Nintendo's consoles is not the lack of processing power, (they've actually held close pace to their competitors; once you strip away the powers of the Xenon and Cell that are impossible to use with games, they're not much beyond the Broadway) but rather that Nintendo has been irritatingly stingy on putting in RAM. The Game Cube came with perhaps a so-called total of 43MB of RAM, but only 24MB of it was general-purpose main memory; 3MB was actually GPU cache, and 16MB was slow memory only good for buffering from the disc. Similarly, the Wii only stacks on another 64MB.

My main hope is that Nintendo might fix this sort of problem; they're mostly afraid of RAM prices going up, but this is getting kinda rediculous.

 

[Yuka]

[citation][nom]Camikazi[/nom]They wouldn't do that, they would lose too much money on games, that is basically cutting their actual game selling in half, and since most companies make most of their money from the game and not the system that would be bad for them.[/citation]

Last time I read about that, M$ and Sony were doing it that way... Console wise at least. Nintendo always makes money when selling a console, always.

Now, future revenues are impacted with that, but still Nintendo games sell a great deal, so Good overall for them

Cheers!

 

[climber]

The next gen consoles from MS and Sony better put at least a couple GBs of GDDR5 memory and DDR3 main memory in their systems

 

[maigo]

So the power of the Wii then

 

[warmon6]

no shocker to me that Nintendo next handheld will have the power around GC.

the Gameboy color had the power of the NES, game boy advance had the power of the SNES, and the DS has (if i remember right) just slightly more power than the N64. Seams to fit perfectly.

[citation][nom]Parsian[/nom]when was the last time you saw Nintendo builds a "powerful" gaming system?but then again, achieving game cube graphics is nothing so especial, Tegra can produce xbox quality graphics...[/citation]

Hmmm..... Last time, I would have to say the NES.

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]climber[/nom]The next gen consoles from MS and Sony better put at least a couple GBs of GDDR5 memory and DDR3 main memory in their systems[/citation]
TBH, more likely is that it'll use all-GDDR5; the higher transfer rate can be used to compensate for the narrow interface widths that consoles usually have to settle for. Remember that for the 360 and PS3, the GDDR3 had a 128-bit interface; and the PS3's XDRAM had a 64-bit one; larger interfaces would've required far steeper prices to cram more pins in a more complicated chip package, and spend much more on a more complicated PCB to hold all the leads; these are costs that Moore's Law would never reduce. Much better to instead take the more chip-heavy end, as revisions to console hardware will cut production costs much more rapidly over time.

[citation][nom]warmon6[/nom]no shocker to me that Nintendo next handheld will have the power around GC. the Gameboy color had the power of the NES, game boy advance had the power of the SNES, and the DS has (if i remember right) just slightly more power than the N64. Seams to fit perfectly.[/citation]
In all honesty, that's what was CLAIMED, but each handheld was actually a tad weaker, particularly later on. I'd say that perhaps the DSi is comparable to the N64, but the original DS... Was far weaker. ARM architectures tend to be less capable on a per-clock basis than ANY other architecture. Plus, the N64 not only had a more potent CPU, it had a full dedicated GPU, that was capable of handling both bilinear filtering and multi-texture blending, but also even hardware transform & lighting. The DS doesn't even really have its own dedicated GPU.

The "DS2" might make this different, particularly if they opt to take a higher-end Tegra chip.