News on DS

[lazyfatbum]

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

-----------------

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

[A Black Falcon]

Nice... :)

[Dark Jaguar]

I noticed that just before I went to bed last night. It is interesting, but I'm not taking up an entire slot on my DS just to store a web browser. It would be better if they could just stick that in the system's firmware, but I have no idea what the stats of the DS firmware even are so I have no idea how feasable such an idea actually is. I have a PSP, which can have a game and the browser without issue thanks to the ability to firmware update.

If Nintendo does not have a method of firmware update that can add massive new features such as that, then they should consider adding that to their next portable system.

[A Black Falcon]

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/breaking/ds...154960.php

Images!

Also, there is a DS TV tuner coming, to Japan at least. Pictures of that too.

[lazyfatbum]

that TV tuner isnt a tuner at all, it actually recieves special digital broadcasts. You probably have to pay for it but it would be cable-TV quality.

[A Black Falcon]

It is a tuner, it's got an antenna. It's just a digital TV tuner, I think...

[Dark Jaguar]

Yep, it's a tuner, making you TECHNICALLY correct. However, you seemed to have been implying the standard TV broadcast tuner, which is where lazy was coming from.

This is all a bit much.

[lazyfatbum]

What DJ said.

You could call a cellphone a 'phone tuner' :D

It looks like the peripherals are about to go nuts. ave you heard about Datel's media player? pretty much like the Play-yan but its got a 4 gig HDD for music, movies, apps, etc. The real difference between datel's and the play-yan is that the play-yan doesn't have the market that datel has - they'll be able to fill every and any store that sells DS stuff with media players, including blockbuster. Down side is, it's probably going to cost around 80 to 100 bucks.. it is a 4 gig HDD after all.

[Dark Jaguar]

HDD? That'll be a drain on the battery power... too many moving parts.

I think this is a bit much because buying all these add-ons to try and turn the DS into the PSP seems to be misplaced effort. Rather, if Nintendo actually wants to go that route, they should focus on simply including a memory card port in their next portable and the ability to update the system's firmware so they can add in support for those features without needing external hardware.

As for me, none of these things interest me. It's too much money just to get the DS to do things I really don't need it to do (I have a PSP already). Nintendo should come back when they've released some GBA to SD card adapter for the DS (plug it in the GBA port, put a USB plug in it too) and allow me to use all sorts of files on my computer in various games. The PSP has this potential too, but so far no one is using it.

[A Black Falcon]

129 UK pounds for the Datel HDD, according to the press release (since Datel is British)... it might be cheaper here (than that number directly made into US dollars), but still, I'd expect over $100 for sure...

As for peripherals... as usual, Nintendo is releasing all kinds of stuff in Japan and not here. I mean... so many of the DS's 'Productivity' titles and apps don't come out over here, how can they seriously expect it to do as well here as is there?

Out in Japan, some for quite some time now (note I'm not giving the actual Japanese names, as I don't think they're overly important for the context of this list)

-Band Bros. (that music game)
-DS Dictionary 1 (Japanese-English, English-Japanese, with a Japanese dictionary and kanji regognition; you'd need to rework it for a US release a lot of course, but a similar product would be nice)
-Play-Yan (the media player for gba)
-DS Training (Brain Age - US)
-DS Training 2
-Brain Flex (the other brain training game)
-card game collection title
-Learn English title

And announced, but not out yet
-Dictionary 2, an improved version of the dictionary that's coming out soon in Japan. 1000 more Kanji, etc...)
-Bimoji Training - practice your kanji (okay, maybe this one has no purpose over here, with an completely alphabetic writing system... :))
-the Digital TV Tuner
-Web Browser
-Speak! DS Cooking Navigator - cooking guide program recently announced. Digital cookbook with voice recognition for going to parts and with speech (to speak to the user)

I'm probably missing some.

Will we get any of these products? Brain Training is announced, and the web browser is probably likely, but the others... nah. It'd cost too much for Nintendo to remake them into apps Americans would want for them to actually make the effort...


Of course, every Japanese title picks and chooses which titles we get, leaving a frusteratingly large list of games we never get to see, and it's always really annoying, so this is nothing special at all... it just shows, in this case, Nintendo's lack of commitment to repeating overseas what they have done in Japan with truly making the DS attractive to all age groups. It's one thing for them to ignore Magical Vacation or for Namco to drop Tales games, but this is another... (oh yeah, and while we're at it, how about Pokemon: Mysterious Dungeon? I know we're getting Trozei, the puzzle game, and Pokemon Ranger, but how about that one? I haven't heard anything, oddly...)