ResearchThe Nintendo Dual-Screen Portable - How Far Can It Go?
Historically, Nintendo has suffered the effects of being first to market. Competitors have simply had to wait and see what Nintendo does, then get to work on a knock-off that includes features Nintendo never thought of. In the past, this has put Nintendo at a disadvantage - they tend to get stuck with systems that look cheap and tacky compared to their eventual competitors. But Nintendo has shown that they can learn from those mistakes, and have come up with innovation beyond everything else before them. Just to see the reports of stores being out of stock for the devices bears testimony to the fact that Nintendo has answered their competition with vigor.
One hardly knows where to start to describe the innovations of the Nintendo DS. The most striking feature is it's folding laptop design. The dual-screens seemingly provide twice the pixel real-estate of other models, even though the screens themselves are smaller. Since there's two of them, games and applications on the system can make smart use of them, putting the action window on the top screen and a menu of options on the bottom one for instance.
Wireless Internet capability itself isn't much of an innovation, but the Nintendo DS has it. The innovation here comes from it's using the mighty Opera web browser! This is the same robust web browser enjoyed by many PC users, only ported to the NDS. The reports are, that not much had to be changed, since the Opera project has already ported their web browser to various platforms before. For those unfamiliar with it, if you've used the popular Firefox, you'll fit right in to Opera. Others may need a minute to familiarize themselves, but the usual controls are pretty much in place.
The lower half of the Dual-Screen is a touch-sensitive pad, which can be manipulated with it's own included stylus. A whole range of titles have been designed to take advantage of this feature. Some Nintendo cartridges use it for a mouse-type point-and-click system. Some use it in game control such as aiming in a first-person shooter, making an incision in a surgery game, or even simulating a joystick. And others use it as part of interactive graphics drawing! This takes the portable gaming console to a new level. No matter what comes after the Nintendo DS, it will have to have a touch-screen or people won't take it seriously.
Nintendo has caught up in the speaker department, adding stereo speakers with virtual surround sound. But they have also added a microphone, which again gets heavy use in some Nintendo titles for features like in-game voice-chat, speech recognition, and even some in-game elements. Future games will require you to blow or shout into the microphone at various points to perform some action in the game.
Nintendo's Dual-Screen portable looks and feels more like a full-fledged laptop computer than any other device on the portable console market. If history repeats itself and Nintendo's competitors scurry to copy and improve upon this model, one may be sure that the bar has been considerably raised forever.