04 October, 2008

One More Thing on the New DS

So the new DS information was made official. It turns out the thing only plays AAC files, not MP3s, making that "feature" pretty useless, from my point of view. And the camera only takes 0.3 megapixel shots, so it's definitely just a toy. So what are the real changes?

1) No Game Boy Advance slot. Backwards compatibility is going away.

2) New SD slot for downloadable games.

Most people look at this and see themselves being charged to buy their GBA games again.

I see something far more valuable: permanent rerelease of out of print games. The main problem with the cartridge format is that games often go out of print and never come back. When I was thinking of getting a friend a DS last Christmas, there were no new copies of Advance Wars DS available. It's the third highest rated DS game of all time, and you can't buy it anymore. The same goes for the first Phoenix Wright game, and probably many other DS classics. To me, that's the potential of the new DS. It will not be fully met as legal issues will make it impossible to rerelease certain games, but it will help.

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