11.05.04 - Gamerz-Edge attended a special event at Nintendo of America yesterday where the Nintendo DS and several games were showcased, along with wireless multiplayer. If you’ve been following the system, you already know that Nintendo is taking a completely new direction in terms of the marketing, although the system itself is a classic product of Nintendo innovation. Presales seem to be doing quite well also seeing as all Gamestop stores across the nation have already stopped taking preorders thanks to having met their sales targets according to the corporate office, and Electronics Botique stores are expected to follow suit soon. In short, if you don’t have one of these babies yet, you’d better get out there and get serious about putting down some money for a reserve.
Tom Harlin said it best at the event: “Nintendo’s philosophy of making games is to make games that anyone can play. DS tries to be innovative and tries to open the door to a lot of people who haven’t played a lot of games and also caters to its fans.” Nintendo seems to be more focused with the DS on multiplayer and the older demographics than ever before in their history. According to Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo’s new Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, the target age group for the Nintendo DS is 19 to 20-year-olds.
While Nintendo has built Wi-Fi capabilities into their upcoming DS, many people are asking whether or not the company will truly push the possibility or instead passively treat it the way that they have the capabilities of their GameCube. Reggie worked to put some of that fear to rest at the event. “The capability’s built right in the box. If a developer had taken that capability, we have games at launch that are Wi-Fi capable. […] We’ve had very serious conversations about this market, we are going to drive and take advantage of that opportunity.”
The other really cool information we learned about the DS at this event was about the customization of the system out of the box. Apparently, the system will include:
Language setting (suggesting that there are no regional lock-outs)
Game Boy Advance default setting (top or bottom screen, for example)
Calendar
Personal Setting (nicknames, comments, favorite color, birthdate, part of your sign-on for messaging software), and
Stylus and system configurations
You can also instruct the DS to start searching wirelessly for gamers and gamepaks that are around you so that you can begin wireless communication or gaming with another person.
We’ll have even more new information on the upcoming DS launch games very soon, but until then, enjoy these pictures we took at the event! And perhaps we should add that now we are more excited about the Nintendo DS than ever before. Nintendo means business with this system, and we’re all going to find out come November 21st.
