ews: DS Web Browser Confirmed
Posted by Arc - Feb 15th 2006 10:18
The DS will be recieving a web browsing application based on Opera. Slated for a June release.
On the heels of Reggie-sponsored rumours indicating Nintendo's interest in designing a DS-specialized web browser, we now have official word
At a press conference this morning in Japan aimed at introducing the DS Lite to the public, Nintendo shared a number of new software revelations for their dual-screened monster portable. Among the announcements was confirmation that a DS-specific web browser is under development. The DS Opera browser will come on a DS card. Users need only power on the system and connect to a wireless network to surf the web. Building off the user interface and featureset of the popular Opera browser, the DS application will span both screens with the touch screen serving for input (with certain stylus gestures allowing for functionality such as changing the viewing angle.) ATOK Kanji conversion will be supported out of the box. Priced at 3800 yen, the browser will be released in Japan come June.
Specific plans to expand the browser into other territories, surprise surprise, have not been announced. As the functionality has been greatly desired by a large number of western DS owners, hopefully Nintendo will take heed.
UPDATE: From the forums on Opera's website, developers have commented that while web email will be functional, features like RSS and widgets could not yet be commented on. It was relayed that Flash and PDF would not be viewable though (likely due to hardware limitations).
Opera has posted their official announcement of the project on their website. Reproduced below:
In Opera's agreement with Nintendo, Nintendo DS users will now be able to surf the full Internet from their systems using the Opera browser. The Opera browser for Nintendo DS will be sold as a DS card. Users simply insert the card into the Wi- Fi enabled Nintendo DS, connect to a network, and begin browsing on two screens.
Earlier this year, Nintendo reported that 13 million Nintendo DS systems were sold to consumers around the world within just 13 months of its debut in November 2004. Nintendo DS combines unique dual screens, touch screen, voice recognition and wireless and Wi-Fi communications capabilities. According to an independent market research company in Japan, Nintendo DS has become the fastest selling video games machine to top the six million sales mark in Japan in just over 14 months since its Japanese debut, breaking the old record held by Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.
"The incredibly popular Nintendo DS is already Wi-Fi enabled to support real time gaming, so adding Web browsing capabilities was a natural evolution for this device," says Scott Hedrick, Executive Vice President, Opera Software. "Gaming devices are growing more advanced and a great Web experience is becoming a product differentiator for gaming manufacturers. Opera is excited to work with Nintendo to deliver a unique dual screen, full Internet experience on Nintendo DS."
With an on-screen keypad and stylus, users can easily navigate the Web from their Nintendo DS with PDA-like functionality. Based on the same core as the Opera desktop browser, Opera delivers superior speed and rendering of Web pages on the Nintendo DS.
"Within just five seconds of turning on the system, the Nintendo DS is already fully operational. This makes it the ideal device to enable people to swiftly obtain the latest information from the internet, wherever they are," says Masaru Shimomura, Deputy General Manager of Nintendo's R & D Department. "Opera exceeded our expectations with its user friendly interface, quick access to all your favorite sites, ease of use and, most importantly, in making the best use of the Nintendo DS system's unique double screens and touch screen features. Opera is an important partner for Nintendo in our efforts to further expand the users of the Nintendo DS."
Nintendo Co., Ltd. held a presentation today in Tokyo, Japan, to announce updates for the Nintendo DS. Information on the availability of the Opera browser DS card has not yet been announced.
Source: DSAdvanced and Opera
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Once this hits, it's going to explode. people will make homebrew voice chat systems, home brew integrated chats through gaming and homebrew appps for anything and everything, you name it. With this little thing you could be surfing the internet in 5 seconds and it would cost nothing, even if you're on it all day. type up a post on TC, play Mario kart, look an hentaii porn, all for free. :D
Things like email, internet phones, webcams and the like will also follow very quickly. This is gonna be awesome. :D
I N THE mid-70s, two blockbusters changed the nature of movie-making: Star Wars and Jaws. Each was competently written, acted and directed, but what set them apart, in the minds of both their adoring audiences and delirious Hollywood executives, were
special effects. When a huge shark and an entire outer space tableau could seem so real, and generate out-of-this-world box office revenue, a new paradigm was set. Computer technology would drive the industry inevitably forward.
Sure enough, we saw hits like Indiana Jones and The Terminator and Harry Potter over the next three decades, but also plenty of costly flops. Remember Waterworld? Howard the Duck? If you don't, you're not alone. Computers alone aren't the answer. Low- tech productions like Napoleon Dynamite and Sideways prove that it still takes more than visuals to make a great movie.
In the terminology of Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, hits like Jaws constituted "disruptive" technologies, overturning a predominant industry trend. Many of the more recent story-based vehicles have also succeeded, even though they seemed geared to "fringe" audiences—think both The Passion of the Christ and March of the Penguins.
The consumer electronics industry today faces this same kind of inflection point. For many years, technical performance reigned, whether measured by the dimensions of TVs, computer memory and speed, or the multiple functions embedded in cell phones. But as Christensen also observed, technological gains can eventually overshoot a market. That leaves a vast opportunity for disruptive technologies whose appeal is typically, "cheaper, simpler, smaller, and frequently more convenient to use." Cue the Apple iPod.
Nowhere does the example fit better than my own industry, videogames. Twenty years ago, we were almost exclusively the province of 12-year-old boys. Many of those same players who grew up playing games with our Mario character retain their appetite for games today, even if their preferred adventure now is darker, deeper and increasingly complex. Still, the performance vector is unchanged: make it look better on screen, make it even harder to win, and players will be happy.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the future. Mounting evidence shows that we may well have overshot our own market. Our games grew so complex they became intimidating, further polarizing players and non-players. Market revenues have sagged in the U.S. for the last two years, and in Japan for six of the last seven. The industry just endured a disappointing holiday season and studies show that non-hard-core gamers are playing less frequently.
Our player pipeline is also shrinking. U.S. Census Bureau data indicate that currently the number of 5-to-9 year old boys in America is 8% smaller than their 10-to-14 year old big brothers. Soon, we won't have simple population growth to expand our market, and that's what we've relied on. Despite dramatic gains in graphical realism in four generations of console platforms, we haven't grown our penetration rate beyond about a third of all American homes. Yes, more people meant more sales, but in relative terms, we haven't succeeded in becoming more popular.
As the next generation of home game consoles gets underway this winter, the cars are prettier, the villains are uglier, and the playing fields look even more realistic. But the game play itself? Well, so far there's not much improvement to report.
Nintendo's counterpunch is disruption. We've determined that the videogame market is ripe for revival—and we're looking to make it happen by reaching out to the millions of players still on the sidelines, including those over the age of 35.
Early moves have been promising. Nintendogs, a game that allows people to train virtual puppies, has doubled the typical percentage of female purchasers, selling 1.5 million copies in about four months. Not bad, given that Nintendo DS hardware is in 4 million hands. In Japan, a pair of games designed to refresh and renew brain activity won over millions of people who previously associated videogames only with their grandkids.
And we've pulled the wraps off a new game interface for our upcoming console, code-named Revolution, that will break down the barriers of complexity that bar newcomers from test driving our products, while featuring the most advanced gaming experience ever. We're expanding our market by disrupting it.
Yes, it's a daunting idea. Small companies often think they don't have the resources to change an industry, no matter how novel their approach. Larger ones frequently maintain a built-in antipathy to undoing what seems to be working. But we agree with the admonition of Jack Welch: "Change—before you have to."
If your business hasn't yet had to face an upstart like Dell or Southwest or Google, you probably will. The pace of change, in terms of market share, product diversity and shareholder value, is intense. A decade ago, anyone who could have effectively predicted the impact of blogging, instant messaging and the proliferation of Web sites would have already been decreed a genius.
In short, the sensible path seems clear: disrupt before you're disrupted.
Reginald Fils-Aime joined Nintendo of America, Redmond, Wash., as evp-sales and marketing in December 2003, with responsibility for the U.S., Canada and Latin America. Previously, he worked at VH1 and held posts at Guinness Import,
It's not jaw-dropping but it's really, really nice looking. It's amazing what they're getting out of the Crytek 2 engine, I can only imagine what they'll do with the upcoming Crysis engine.
According to this solution of Einstein's field equation, at 57.7% of the speed of light, relative to us, an object's gravity well will warp to such a degree that, directly in front of the object (relative to it's direction of motion), the gravity well will actually shoot foward as a beam, growing stronger and stronger as the ship accelerates. This can be thought of as an "anti gravity beam" the object can "fall" through. This is only good for up to about 90% light speed, but that's still pretty good. The solar system would all be within reach.
There are all those other nasty relativity consequences to take into account though, as well as how to build something that could use this method. Also others are rechecking this guy's work to make sure the equations do result in this. Assuming Einstein might actually have been right (and we have good evidence to say he was right on a number of things), we're off to Pluto on a quick 15 (I'd guess) hour trip.
As we all know, the eternal sapphic struggle bewteen the world's hottest girls inevitably boils down to this:
Natalie Portman v. Rosamund Pike.
Natalie has the brains, and charms of a next-door neighbor girl--but don't let that perturb you, she's dazzlingly beautiful too! You'll all know her from the dismal Prequels trilogy.
Pike is all-beauty, and has a dignified, up-standing sort of sociable charm. You know her from Die Another Day and the Doom movie.
I'm sure you've all already seen it, and this is old news, but its new to me. If they wanted to make a lame action carriage for the Rock to ride, why did they have to ruin the Doom franchise? They took the most clichéd, lamest, most stereotypical action plot... man, it... just sucked, and I wanted to put in my two cents.
I can hardly believe it's been five years since Rumble City closed its doors. Can't believe I've been running the place this long.
Remember the night of February 15th? All of us were at RC, posting our asses off, saying our goodbyes and waiting to see it go off into the sunset. Not the best of times, but definitely memorable. Then, once everyone else had gone, abstractica and I went and saved all those threads, which I promised would be archived. Five years later, well, heh, no archive. :D
I don't even have the threads right now. They're sitting on a hard drive that lazy currently has. He's going to send it back to me eventually.
Well, this isn't a big thread to just suck my own dick. It's been a fun five years. No, I'm not about to say goodbye, good luck, so long. Just reflecting, is all.
But, as with any big event, I decided to make new stylesets. This time, I made two, in celebration of the upcoming Twilight Princess. You can find them on the selection list below.
As well as it being five years, incidentally, it's also the tenth new design. Thus, I wanted to make it a little more special. So, I made both a bright-colored look (Sunlight Edition) and a dark-colored look (Twilight Edition).
The Standard format is gone. This was partially due to a mistake on my part brought on by curiosity. I didn't realize all this time that you can set the whole board to the classic look via one of the main control panel's switches. Unfortunately, toggling this switch completely rewrites ALL of the templates, wiping out the Standard set. That in itself wasn't a problem as the Standard set was default. However, the Classic view that we had was one I made myself, and I know most people here use it. So, I decided to leave it as it is. I don't really have the time to sit and reprogram the entire template. Sorry. =/
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy the new sets. They're a little simpler in appearance than the last two, but I actually changed some things quite a bit.
