Revolution and the DS

“Revolutionary”???? I read about these “revolutionary” ideas a couple of years back. Did you just wake up from a very long nap?
It amazes me when a company adopts technology that 90% of other computer related companies have had and call it “revolutionary”. And they get paid big bucks for this stuff. The word “clueless” comes to mind for some reason.

They mean “revolutionary” in the way it is presented.

Oh, the whole DS connects to Revolution bit was confirmed monthes ago. o_O

Example: The Nintendo DS touch screen. You’d be hard pressed to find a game like Nintendogs or Yoshi’s Touch N Go on a Palm Pilot. Nintendo took technology that is old and used it in a new way.

A better example: Cars had wheels before, but the industry was revolutionized when someone decided it would be a good idea to put RUBBER around the wheels. Rubber existed before that, of course, but no one thought to put it around the wheels of a car until later.

It’s not clueless to adopt and adapt old technology for new purposes. It’s like when people said: “We already have a TV, why would we need it to be color?” Was it clueless to add color?

Amen, it is about time someone spoke up. If anything, everthing invented today is just an improvement on another.
By the way, I was reading this article that had a picture of how the ds could go online with the revolution. I am not sure if it is true or not.

http://www.dsgaming.co.uk/html/modules/news/article.php?storyid=484

It’s funny how connectivity is “Revolutionary” to Nintendo.

2 things. First, it looks to me that it’s the people online who are speculating the connectivity to be ‘revolutionary’, so I don’t think that’s official. Second, I can’t see why not having DS connect to the revolution would “alienate their faithful”… It’d be nice to see them connect and do something useful for sure, but not having that would “alienate” the fanbase? I think not. They’re 2 distinctly different devices.

True, “alienate” wasn’t the best choice of words. I know most Nintendo fans are mostly loyal, and I guess he’s saying this loyalty would be better rewarded if their eagerly anticipated new console is compatible with the handheld many have just forked out for.

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nintendo fanboy your a fucking moron. nintendo is making a gamboy advance2 soon they really dont care bout the ds it was a gimmick they could waste money on because they are sitting on a huge amount of money. they knew it would sell only because it had the nintendo name on it any other crappy product they selled might of suck but it still selled. think virtual boy. im a nintendo fan to but its called the truth read more gaming news and make sure you pay attention at e3.

Armourqdog,

“your a fucking moron” you said…

First off. it’s “you’re a fucking moron.”

Secondly, Nintendo’s going to be releasing about 100 new games for the NDS by the end of 2005. The PSP? Around 50. The Virtual Boy had what, maybe a dozen games released? The NDS is not going the way of the Virtual Boy.

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both sony and nintendo are fukin good. but nintendo is obviously better.

Nintendo and Sony should merge to fight Microsoft. Sony and Nintendo used to be a team man! Sony was working on a project for the snes that gave it a CD rom. Nintendo canned the project, sony got pissed, and the playstation was born. The point is, they are both very good companies. NO MORE GAMER HATIN’

Don’t make this comment bored a flame house please. Nintendo fans go back to the nintendo boards and quit flaming the psp. Psp fans, same to you, don’t flame the ds. The ds and psp are both good, but appeal to a different type of gamer. Don’t be leetest and make it a war, between the two handhelds. No one knows for sure where handheld gaming will be in the next year, so don’t make dumb blanket statements on what this is gonna be when or what not.

And for the ds releasing more games quicker, of course, the ds is much easier to come out with games because its easier to code 2d games, and lower quality graphics. Though it is dissapointing that the psp is only releasing 50 games at the end of 2005. But releasing alot of games doesn’t make a system better.

Well, i thought i would help clear things up on the whole REVOLUTION thing. On IGN.com i read an article that said that the reason that the Nintendo Revolution is being called this is because it may in fact project in 3-d. This is of course just a rumour but if true it really will be awesome and in fact truly REVOLUTIONary.

Ya shaun i heard that to and it would be pretty cool, I mean really cool to have a REAL(emphasis on REAL) 3D game, but something else I’ve heard is that the gyroscopes are being used like VR systems use them, so it could also be a really cool VR system(which would be so freaking cool).

I agree with you two about the 3D, that would be one of the most revolutionary things they could do. The technology has been around for a while but no one’s ever made REAL good use out of it (hopefully they can make it so it doesn’t give you headaches). I know there is a company (I believe it’s called XD3 or something like that, they have made a tv that can project an image out a couple of inches- think along the lines of Minority Report). I hope Nintendo blows us away with whatever it does. Personally I don’t see how graphics are going to improve THAT much. Even if they can make it look like a movie, it’s still on a flat screen. A true 3D would certainly be a nice leap for them to make. We’ll see though, hopefully we’ll hear something after E3.

Last time I checked that gaming ghetto thing is a quote from sony’s president, and where does the psp revolutionize anything I mean really, sony is to afraid to be daring and make a product that innovates everything that came before it(DS). My point is that if anyone’s in a ghetto it’s sony and it’s consoles.

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truth teller = nintendo fanboy… if you manage to decipher what he’s saying. lol you’re the bullpoo

notice how the portagame banner shows a psp, not a ds or gizmondo? well, you can go figure why.

Man…. I should have shown up a but earlier and done some flame dousing on this comment thread. *sighs* Oh, the PSP will have nearly 65 titles by Christmas, and over 100+ UMD movies. The Nintendo DS will have 100+ games by Christmas. This is from the current release lists. At E3, more games will be announced for both systems, but at this moment.. the PSP is going to have a few very slim monthes. Of course, this is to be expected looking at THIS time of the year. Closer to the end of the year it picks up.

The reason the front banner is a PSP is because they tested it with that banner. We’re working on a more universal banner for a reason. Oh, Varchesis, you do know that the PSP is really a handheld N64 right? It’s using the same type of CPU. The games on the PSP are what N64 games would have looked like had Nintendo gone with CDs instead of cartridges. Aiming your hatred at the Nintendo DS is what Nintendo wants you to do, so go for it. Just a word of caution for the future.

Apparently the next Game Boy system will be using a custom ARM11 chip in conjunction with a dedicated Graphics Chip. For a quick bit on how it would stack up with the PSP? Let’s look at a comparable benchmark. Dhrystone MIPS. MIPS are “Million Instructions Per Second.” This translates to just raw power.

PSP’s main chip = 125 Dhrystone MIPS
ARM 11 MPCORE runs = 650 Dhrystone MIPS

Considering that the above stat looks way good, a few things need to be considered. The DS uses an ARM 9 Custom which runs at 300 Dhrystone MIPS, however.. the Nintendo DS has way less RAM to work with than the PSP. If Nintendo added something to up the memory on the Nintendo DS and changed the type of format the Nintendo DS uses… the Nintendo DS would output better graphics than the PSP could hope to match at LESS MEMORY COST. Yet, Nintendo crippled the DS for some reason. I think the reason is for this purpose: A false sense of security. E3 will be interesting because the DS Option Paks are supposed to show up at it. Option Paks for the unit will add things like force feedback, MEMORY EXPANSION, a small hard drive unit, etc. So, who knows.. we’ll find out in a few weeks though. If Nintendo does push out a RAM EXPANSION for the Nintendo DS.. I suspect people won’t be able to look at their $250 investment with the same sense of smug superiority anymore.

those dhrystone mips stats are inflated. show me the website that talks about those benchmarks - they are probably running an unfair benchmark, like for example, comparing graphics cards using only opengl games like doom3 to compare ati vs. nvidia cards. nvidia’s cards are better at running opengl, while ati cards give higher framerates for directx games.

sorry, but simply put, everyone knows the psp has better hardware, if not software than the ds, even with the ‘ram upgrade’. why do you think it only has 3-10 hours of battery life? it uses really fast and hot hardware. because nintendo did not put such cutting-edge hardware into the ds, they were able to keep the game and hardware development costs low, and the battery life longer, even with the dual screens. plus, even if the ds had a better proc, ram, vid chip, etc, the screen is nowhere near the resolution of the giant psp screen.

Cream, you’re vastly delusional and you know nothing about the chipsets you’re talking about.

The PSP uses as it’s main processor a custom 64-Bit MIPS R4000 CPU. The N64 had a custom 64-Bit MIPS R4300I CPU. For those who care, the Play Station X (PSOne) uses a 32-Bit MIPS R3000A CPU and the Play Station 2 uses a custom 128-Bit chip that has nothing to do with MIPS. MIPS is the name of a company that designs CPUs as well as the name of a benchmark. The Game Cube uses a custom chip that is not designed by MIPS as well.

Dhrystone MIPS are an older and very simplistic benchmarking statistic given out by chip companies like MIPS, ARM, and others. The specs on the ARM 11 are on their website and the specs for various other MIPS chips are on their website as well as other technical websites. They are not the same as how graphics cards are compared because Dhrystone MIPS are an instruction set of very simple math. Dhrystone MIPS ignore everything except for the main CPU’s main sub-routines. In other words, it’s an EXTREMELY simple test and they were one of the only ways to measure performance in CPUs from way back in the 1980’s. They are still used today by many chip makers. The EEMBC stats for the PSP, DS, Game Cube, PS1, PS2, and etc are not available. Since looking at the bits of a chip (64bit, 32bit, etc.) has been rendered irrelevant by the computer industry, Dhrystone MIPS are one of the few ways to measure CPU performance that is accepted by the video game industry. If you’ve never heard of them before, chances are: You don’t know anything about Chipsets.

Again, those specs are simple.
For this chart, Dhrystone MIPS will be shortened to the more widely used term: Dmips

PSP = 125 Dmips

N64 = 125 Dmips
PS1 = 30 Dmips (No really… 30.)
DS = 300 Dmips
Arm 11 = 650 Dmips
Game Cube = 1125 Dmips

There you have it. An interesting thing to note is that the N64 barely uses 5V. The original GB used 5V and slowly moved down in power usage to 3V for the GBA. The DS runs at 3V in both modes. The PSP runs at 5V. That’s power usage. Sony could have cut that power usage by a bit if they went with a higher up chip from MIPS. The CPU in the PSP is nearly ten years old. The GPU is fairly new, but the main heart of the PSP is nearly ten years old. The ARM 9e Custom in the DS is actually a better CPU than the one in the PSP, BUT it is limited by the DS’s lack of MEMORY BANDWIDTH and the size of the software. Right now, Nintendo’s software on the DS is only 1gb, or 128Megabits. Gigabits are not to be confused with GigaBytes. One Byte is 8 Bits. Compared to the space of 1GB or rather 8gigabits. (8,192megabits) So, the PSP software has eight times the space for textures and audio. The PSP also has a large MEMORY BANDWIDTH. Originally, their Memory Bandwidth was fairly small, in fact is was 4MB. It was expanded at the request of developers to 32MB. This helps make up for the inadequate CPU of the PSP by leaps and bounds. The DS has substantially lower Memory Bandwidth and software space. If both systems had the same memory bandwidth and software space, the ARM9e would roll flat, light, and smoke the MIPS R4000. It’s just the simple truth. Now, a small memory expansion for the DS does nothing for it’s small software sizes; but it does up the visuals of the system to close to what the PSP does. Now, if Nintendo had gone with small optical medium instead of their current medium, then there’s no contest, the DS would whip the PSP’s butt power wise.

The ARM 11 that Nintendo is considering for the next Game Boy will do exactly that easily. ARM and MIPS both have sites where you can download their chipsets specifications.

ARM is http://www.ARM.com
MIPS is http://www.MIPS.com

While there at MIPS, check out the fairly newer, better, and more power effecient chips that MIPS released over the last few years that SHOULD have gone into the PSP but didn’t because Sony would rather you THINK they’re cutting edge than be cutting edge.

very informative post dmgice… and im not in the dark about but only a few things hidden in the industry lol.

“Sony would rather you THINK they’re cutting edge than be cutting edge.”

perfectly put, this is the reason the ps2 is the #1 console to this day. think of all the promises they made pre-release! “film-like graphics, indistinguishable from real life”, think of all the fake screens that were made. think of all the cinematic sequences that were claimed to be “in game”. i still resent them for it.

anyway - although i dont know why the ds would have so little ram - but i can certainly see good reason for them to stick with a cartridge medium. its a portable machine - PORTABLE, umd’s dont lend themselves well to portability. so playing a psp at home may be perfectly fine, it really cant compete with the ds as far as how well it lends itself to adventures like road trips. its like a high-maintenance girlfriend. yeah theyre fun to have around but youve got to do so much for them to keep them in commission lol.

anyway - i still really like the psp, dont get me wrong - but i have a lot of resentment towards the marketting and teh consumer viewpoint of it all. nintendo is the most honest and true to their word game and hardware developer in the industry.

I think the idea of DS connecting to the Revolution cool and with the new Nintendo Revolution console coming to horizen it will be the fight of the consoles. XBOX 360,PS3 and the Revolution WHO WILL WIN!!!

This is cool they should do it!!!!!!!!!

DS connecting to the Revolution is cool to me if they do it, it will be better than Xbox 360!!!!

Nintendo connect eh? Sounds suspiciosly like Wi-Fi if you ask me… and thats completely new and revolutionary…..for about 5 years ago