I'm very interested in the DS so here is my take.
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IGN is reporting that the system has over 100 different developers with kits, all who are planning on supporting the system.
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I find this hard to believe. After working with Nintendo for a while I've learned that getting support from them is a bit of a challenge unless you are 1st party. This is not to say that developers arent interested in the system, I just dont know anyone that has a kit yet.
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I feel the videogame industry has really become stale lately. I mean, how many variations on the Tekken/Final Fantasy/MarioKart/GTA/Half-Life/MGS themes will the market support?
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There is a reason for this. Publishers want to make money. Titles like this have proven to make a profit. What certain companies don't understand is that even though you can make a clone of these games 90% of them will be garbage. With the budgets of games these days you really need to make a triple-A title to make any sort of profit. The sad thing is that some brilliant games get lost in the shuffle. Smaller development studios who dont have the assets to market their game and hype it up suffer the most from this.
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I dunno, just like the GBA was a pocket SNES, this'll be a pocket N64.
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Look at the specs of each system
N64
CPU: 64-bit R4300i RISC (93.75MHz) / 64-bit data paths, registers with 5-stage pipelining
Co-processor: 64-bit RISC (62.5MHz)
RAM: 4MB (36Mb) upgradeable
Graphics: Pixel Drawing Processor (RDP) built into co-processor
Colors: 16.7 million (32,000 on screen)
Polygons: 150,000 per second
Resolution: 640x480 pixels
Sound: 16 to 24-channel 16-bit stereo (up to 100 PCM channels possible)
DS
Main Processor - ARM946E-S (Running at 67 MHz)
Cache: 8 KB Instruction Cache, 4KB Data Cache
TCM: 8KB Instruction, 4KB Data
Sub Processor - ARM7TDMI (Running at 33 MHz)
Main Memory - 4 MB (Debug version has 8 MB)
ARM9/ARM7 Shared - 32KB (16KB x 2)
ARM7 Internal RAM - 64 KB
VRAM - 656 KB
Display Size - 256 x 192 RGB Screens x 2
Display Colors - 262,144 colors
2D Graphics Engine
Background - Maximum 4 layers
Objects - Maximum of 128
3D Graphics Engine
Geometric Transformation - Max 4 million vertex/sec
Polygon Rate - Max 120,000 polys/sec
Pixel Fillrate - Max 30 million pixels/sec
16 channel ADPCM/PCM (Max 8 channels can be set to PSG)
Microphone input
Wireless Communication - 802.11 Protocol
Input Device
Touch Panel
Direction Pad, A, B, L, R buttons, Start, Select (X, Y buttons being considered)
It will be a powerfull unit, the thing that really got my attention was the actuall design of the unit is not exclusive to gaming. The touch screen and 802.11 protocol really leaves things open for Nintendo to maybe do a lot more with this product. I've been a Nintendo guy ever since I got my NES and hope that this will bring them back into my good graces
AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PUT THE DANG X/Y BUTTONS ON THE DS!! Even if a game does not use them, it allows for so much more control sets.