Upcoming Handheld War: 3DS vs NGP

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megamanx00

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It's not just the price of the system, but the games as well. Nintendo provided the games for the audience that the DS was aimed at. They also milked the hell of out Pokemon. After all without software the hardware is useless.
 

m3kw9

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Both system are sufficiently advance. So next is you need good games to sell the system, nuff said. I ain't getting neither until there is a game that looks good.
 

wawa sxm

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3DS seems in some ways to be a last-gen product with a pretty new coat of paint."

Wasn't that the axect same thing they said about the wii?....This articles seems to put a lot of faith in the product it knows the least about....imo sony lost its way after the ps2, it has forgotten that its not technologie but the fun factor that counts. Loyal fans and huge marketing is only gonna get them so far. Atleast nintendo is much more consistant, being able to play old games....and i know on toms they like playing on the cloud and d/l content but i for one don't like being forced to have an internet connection to play a game
 

dconnors

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[citation][nom]wawa sxm[/nom]3DS seems in some ways to be a last-gen product with a pretty new coat of paint." Wasn't that the axect same thing they said about the wii?[/citation]

You're half-right, since the Wii was basically a GameCube with motion control. The part you missed is where the Wii launched for $249.99, which was significantly less than its competitors. The 3DS is also launching at $249.99, which is $70 higher than any other handheld Nintendo has ever sold.

-Devin
 

c0oim4n

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[citation][nom]dconnors[/nom]You're half-right, since the Wii was basically a GameCube with motion control. The part you missed is where the Wii launched for $249.99, which was significantly less than its competitors. The 3DS is also launching at $249.99, which is $70 higher than any other handheld Nintendo has ever sold.-Devin[/citation]
Not only is the Wii a GameCube with motion control, It's a GameCube with a modified PowerGlove-based system. Nothing about the Wii is "new," or "revolutionary," its all just recycled garbage Nintendo has played around with before. The 3DS is basically the same way, because Nintendo's played with 3D before in a portable setting. (Virtual Boy, anybody?)

IMO, nothing that is ever going to be released by either of the "big 3" game console companies will be "new" or revolutionary, or anything special, because everyone's seen everything else already.
 

rhino13

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I fear that Nintendo has goten in the habit of launching gimics each generation.
They need to finally back this up with some kind of third party support!
 

kinggraves

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The 3DS is a last gen product? Could you point me to the current generation of 3D mobile gaming devices which don't need glasses to use? Even if the technology itself is nothing new, that does not mean that they are not pioneering it for their own industry. Motion control was nothing new either and I hear that worked out pretty well for Nintendo. It must since their competition is running to copy their success.

I don't consider this a war at all. They share the same market but they have two different primary demographics and serve two different purposes. It would be more fair to compare NGP to smartphones because that's where their real competition lies.

The deciding factor for Nintendo's success will be whether or not the 3D aspect delivers and more importantly how safe it is. Low resolution or not, a lot of people seemed to enjoy the 3D picture, but there are also concerns that overuse, much like with other 3D technologies, can bring eye strain and headaches. When you turn the 3D off, all you're left with is a DS again. Still, I think most of the decent developers will be behind Nintendo here, it seems like this time around they're aware of the damage done by "flash carts" and are keeping an eye on piracy.

And the NGP's success? Well no doubt the people salivating most over that are those in the mod/emulation community. There's been a lot of confusion between NGP and the "PSP phone" that actually ended up being more about a PS Suite emulator. So there isn't Android on the NGP then, right? Well maybe, maybe not. The main OS may not be Android, but that doesn't mean it's not hiding in there, and if it is, it will be found and exploited easily. Considering how anti-piracy Sony is, they'd better lock this one up tight, because that hardware could go to some nice usage running emulators, even PSP/PS1. I'm not really impressed with Sony's promises of PS3 games ported to handheld though. They weren't made to be played on such a small screen.

It seems like both sides of this are bringing the same types of products as they brought last time. Even if both of them manage to keep to all their boasts, DS vs PSP ended up with Nintendo coming out on top.

 

jase70

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Nintendo is going to lose market share this time around. Sony NGP looks to be a much stronger product than the PSP was, and the iOS devices are coming on strong. There is no way that the 3DS is going to be anywhere near as successful as the Nintendo DS was.
 

dconnors

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[citation][nom]kinggraves[/nom]The 3DS is a last gen product?[/citation]

If you look beyond the glasses-free display and consider the hardware inside the 3DS, then yes it is a last-gen console. The same applies to the Wii and GameCube, in a sense. The Wii is "current-gen" but the internal components are very similar to the GameCube, a console five years its senior. There's quite a bit of correlation here: The 3DS and Wii are both based on older tech with a new "exciting" addition, be it motion control or 3D. It worked with the Wii...but there is no guarantee it will work for the 3DS, especially since the reception of 3D has been lukewarm so far.

Furthermore, if you are John or Jane Doe buying your kid a portable game console, then the NGP and 3DS definitely share a market. You need to take off the "I'm a power user who buys every awesome piece of hardware" glasses and put on the "I'm a parent on a budget who can only buy one console or the other" glasses. Parents buying tech for kids can make or break a console.

-Devin
 

nottheking

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I call BS on anyone that tries to label the 3DS as "last-gen" but the NGP not. Taking a loot at what we can compare between them (such as Metal Gear Solid on both) they both look about comparable: with graphical capabilities that land closest to the 360 and PS3 of any such devices out there. (since those consoles are respectively 4 and 5 years old by now, this is expectable)

Just because the 3DS isn't confirmed to have a quad-core CPU doesn't mean it's down-and-out: must I remind Sony fans that the PS3's CPU has only one core, too, yet still is vastly more potent than the competitions' CPUs? Not everything is clear-cut here. It's all about how the design works. Further, there's no solid confirmation of WHAT the 3DS' CPU is... All that's known is what the GPU is. (which on its own is impressive, and readily comparable to the SGX543 in the NGP)

Overall, I'd say that both handhelds look pretty comparable... And for the first time ever, yes, perhaps there's a credible threat to Nintendo's dominance. The PSP was rolled over almost 3:1, with Nintendo keeping a 73.7% market share. Its main problems involved poor targetting: it was too expensive a piece for the market, and hence never caught on as a portable gaming machine: it instead mostly was favored for its impressive homebrew capabilities. While a showcase to the device's power, it didn't exactly make it a market winner.

A closer matchup means that Nintendo will have some real company to deal with... So this should be exciting to watch; my prediction is that this might be the most hotly-contested and even 'bout since the SNES vs. Genesis fight of almost 20 years ago. And at that time, everyone was the winner there: that fight was what made gaming consoles start to truly "grow up." While Nintendo did eventually win, they had to entirely surrender their old iron-fisted regime over who could make what games, and cross-platform releases started to become the norm, benefiting everyone. I'm hoping this might do something similar, perhaps for download markets, homebrew, or perhaps both. (a true gaming ApStore, anyone?)

[citation][nom]dconnors[/nom]The same applies to the Wii and GameCube, in a sense.[/citation]
Give me a single source on the Wii's actual specs that is NOT a copy-paste of what IGN said back in 2005. (before the console was even finalized) As it turns out, Nintendo's managed to keep all specs under-wraps... But those of us who are knowledgeable enough about hardware and software engineering have been able to get a few clues... And they all indicate IGN's guess was wildly off. While the base core architecture of the Wii is an extension of the GameCube's, the same can be said that a Core i7 is just an extension of the Pentium III.

Overall capabilities-wise, the Wii lags in two main respects: maximum display resolution and memory quantity. The former is a hard limit: it can't go above 1MB for a frame buffer, as unlike the 360 and PS3 (and many other consoles, including even the N64, DS, PSP, and Dreamcast) it has a fixed frame buffer, and can't simply allocate memory at will to it. However, it's not as huge as is made out to be: it may be limited to 720x480 or so, but the Xbox 360 doesn't actually do 720p most of the time: most top-shelf titles actually run at something like 576p, (1024x576) 64% the screen area of true 720p; 480p is 69.4% the size of 576p, meaning the 360's resolution tends to be actually closer to the Wii's than the PS3's in these games.

The latter weakness is in total memory, one of the handful of figures that could be accurately measured by simply looking in the case: a copy of the GameCube's original memory setup (27MB) was found packed into one of the chips, and there's a further single RAM chip on-board: examination of it reveals that it's entirely identical to the graphics RAM in the PS3, (which has four such chips) which means it's 64MB, and clocked to the same 1400 MHz as in the PS3. This is a distinct shortage, but in both capacity and bandwidth, once you note the reduced demands due to cut resolution, as well as the bandwidth gains due to the multi-part system, (which comes at the expense of ease of programming) you wind up with a RAM supply that, while still inferior to the PS3 or 360's, is still VASTLY more superior than, say, the PS3's. (to compare total bandwidth of a few systems, the original Xbox topped at 6.4GB/sec, the Wii 26.3GB/sec, the 360 22.4GB/sec, the PS3 35.2GB/sec) Overall, one can't describe the Wii as a "modified GameCube," rather, if you wanted to make a comparison on that lines, it'd be better to describe the Wii as "a GameCube plus an Xbox."

Worse yet is your idea that the GameCube was somehow behind on the 6th generation. Sure, it didn't match up to the Xbox, but then again, nothing did: it was the (black) elephant in the room that era: the PS2 didn't match it, and if anything, it was the DreamCast, with its specs that curiously scream "I need to beat the N64," that was the laggard of the 6th generation.
 

dconnors

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When did I say the GameCube was behind the rest of the hardware in its generation? Also, your GameCube:Wii :: PIII: Core i7 comparison is an incredible stretch.

Your point on the Cell processor is only partially correct. The Cell might have one physical core but its multithreading goes beyond anything any other consumer single-core chip can accomplish. The one core is split into eight threads - one PPE and seven SPEs.

And for the record, Metal Gear Solid for the NGP looks better than its 3DS cousin. If both consoles were equally capable, then why is the 3DS getting a PlayStation 2 game (Snake Eater) instead of a PS3 game (Guns of the Patriots)?
 
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To hell with all the blabber, the NGP has 2nd analog stick that is enough reason for me to get it
 
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actually i might get the ngp mainly because i pretty much sold my psp after i beat peace walker and not only that but i think that the look of the ngp looks better than the psp and the pspgo, then of course the psp gets a 2nd analog stick so it would be alot better to play 3rd person shooters like mgs, gta, maybe a resistance retrobution sequal, and of course uncharted.
 
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It's rather idiotic to compare them. The 3DS and NGP were made with radically different goals in mind (just look at the specs and designs). That being said, the 3DS with it's parental controls and kid-friendly mascots will appeal more to the average parent. The NGP will appeal to those who wanted a portable PS3.

IMO, the NGP will have a higher price and even lower battery life then the 3DS. The 3DS won't have as much appeal because the most advertised feature (glasses free 3D, of course) doesn't work for everyone. I think Nintendo should have downplayed the 3D because while it is cool (It worked for me at a demo unit), it only affects the user's gameplay perspective (judging distance, ect). To sum it up, both have disadvantages hardware and marketing-wise.

I'm not getting either, because neither appeal to me. One one hand, you have a DS with Xbox level graphics, glasses-free stereoscopic 3D, and an analogue slider. On the other, you have a PSP with two thumbsticks, a touch screen, and an awkwardly placed back touchpad. In my opinion, neither of those are worth $300.

But as people say, "it's the games that make the console", so let's look at that. On the NGP, you have current-gen console ports and several new IPs. On the 3DS, you have last-gen ports and several new IPs. The ports will have new features to take advantage of the respective handheld's features. The only issue? They're ports of games I own or have played. There'd be really no point, in my opinion, to pay $40+ for the same game with a fresh coat of paint. The twist is that most people are planning on getting said consoles FOR these ports.

To sum up my rant, neither of them are worth the time and money. Until Nintendo gets their act together and releases a console that doesn't rely completely on a "gimmick" (which is debatable, but at least understand that not everyone wants motion control and 3D), or until Sony stops trying to put out gaming machines that pathetically try to pass themselves off as multimedia devices, I'll be sticking with my iPhone.
 
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