 | DSI, NINTENDO, INDUSTRY, DS, SATORU IWATA, IWATA ASKS DSi - Technology takes time |
Iwata Asks is one of Nintendo's greatest features these days. These articles give us so much insight into the company's inner workings that it's amazing their competitors don't seem to have enough information to start competing with Nintendo on a level playing field.
The latest Iwata Asks is an interview with some of the DSi's engineers. Although you see many sites reporting some of the nifty little factoids contained within the discussion, few have pointed out the underlying ideas behind the new DS's hardware design.
The most interesting part of this episode, to me, is that it doesn't mention anything about the DSi's significantly increased hardware specs. In spite of the fact that it sports a doubled processor speed and quadrupled RAM, you don't see these things anywhere in the interview. You know that if Microsoft or Sony were in Nintendo's position, they would spend half the article talking about what developers can do with those features to make portable games with better graphics.
The reason Iwata and the engineers don't talk about the upgraded performance is that, to Nintendo, that aspect is probably the least significant addition to the DSi. From a hardware standpoint, you could almost consider the DSi a full successor/replacement to the DS. But Iwata even notes during the interview that they didn't want people to feel as though the new handheld is leaving the DS or DS Lite in the dust.
This is an interesting attitude to take since companies who deal with technology thrive on sales of new products. But the upgrades discussed in Iwata Asks seem more geared to catch the DS up with the Wii in terms of blue ocean appeal. You have the cameras, you have the new image and audio capabilities, you have DSiWare and the SD card slot. You no longer have to power off the hardware to make it recognize that you've changed the game cartridge.
Of course, another reason to play down the importance of the DSi's greater power is that most game developers won't be able to take advantage of that power until there is a significant installed base who can buy those games. (From all we've heard so far, games that use these upgrades won't be able to run at all on an older DS, even in a "graceful degrade" scenario.)
I look forward to seeing how the DSi performs outside of Japan. The DS Lite will surely continue to see great sales due to its lower price, but how quickly will consumers adopt its successor? Will most people wait for a price drop (which would likely accompany the permanent departure of the Lite), or will they jump to upgrade as soon as possible?
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