Actually it’s not a joke…it’s more of a terrible story told by a drunken hobo, all while he’s bleeding to death on the side of a railroad track. (I think I dreamt that once.)
Seriously though…what the crap, Nintendo? This DSiWare initiative was a GOOD one on a very basic level: Provide portable gamers inexpensive games on the go, and get some of this downloadable content mojo going before the phone market eats your lunch. Not to mention to what Sony could do with the PSP in that arena.
So they put everything into place: A new DS, the store is up, the games are ready, the download setup is cake. Seems like a win, right? WRONG!
Every week, they offload 1, maybe 2 titles, that are COMPLETE crap! Games they want 8 bucks for that represent 20 minutes of gameplay, or that are so terrible, that you will never want to pay money for anything ever again.
The best stuff on that store are mini-games ripped out of other cartridge titles from the past. WarioWare and others. So they want 2 to 8 bucks for stuff that is being recycled from other games! Even then, that store is like a walmart during the zombie uprising: Empty.
I have been a LIFELONG Nintendo fan, and I have owned every iteration of GameBoy there ever was. And I think the DS has done amazing things to push gaming forward, and invent really interesting ways of playing.
Nintendo has shown with the Wii that they really don’t understand what a good online strategy is, so I should not be all that surprised by what they are doing with the DSi. But I am just so sad about it! My DSi is sitting in a drawer! Collecting dust! And probably air-borne fecal matter and dog hair for all I know!
I download GREAT content to my 360, my PS3, my iPhone, and my PC and Mac…there is NO reason, with this much time under its belt, that the DSi is not getting more of my love. I am here, arms open wide, ready to bring it back into my life!
It just needs to get its life together and get some professional help.
I enjoyed Boxlife, Dr. Mario was all right, and Warioware is a fun way to show off those systems, but with those few exceptions, you’re exactly right: the store needs help in the form of much better games.
You could say the same thing about the WiiWare store, though — it’s got a few titles worth getting, but most of it is junk and it has almost no marquee titles when compared to something like Xbox Live.
I hear ya. It makes me so sad too. I’m really worried about what’s going to happen to Nintendo. And I’m mad at them for disappointing Nintendo fans like me. I wanted to want a DSi so bad this year, but I just couldn’t muster up the desire since I’ve been gleefully playing on my iPhone. I was sure I’d get one when the DSi store took off. Thanks for this post. Now I know. You took the word right out of my mouth. Poop!
NPC is a great comic!
Let’s not forget that this is the first major online store for handheld gaming platform (and no, the appstore doesn’t count-when people start buying the iPhone as a gaming platform and not as a phone, I’ll take that argument seriously), but yeah to be honest that whole store content and interface is pretty crappy.
But I don’t really play my DS for download games because I have a Lite, not the DSi, as do the majority of platform owners. I’m optimistic that once it comes on the next generation of Nintendo’s platform ( a true DS2 not DS upgrade), it may be improved.
Rebuttal: iPod Touch
Sad to say this is not really surprising. The big N has treated an online content it interaction like a boogyman for awhile now. From out and out denial of the importance of online interaction to quarter hearted measures more trouble than they’re worth for what online activities the do have like friend codes it’s no big shock to see them once again botching the online component. I don’t know who it is at N that is responsible for this pathetic grasp of the online world, but something there needs to change. It’s a no-brainer that they should be able to prosper here, but for some reason they are once again dragging thier feet.
I agree with you comments about the DSi store, but I think that there are still plenty of great games on the DS and to have it sitting in the drawner is sad. Scribblenauts and Mario and Luigi 3 are both brand new, great titles that make owning a DS a wonderful thing. Having said that, I have had no real motivation to move from my DS Lite. Nintendo sucks at the internet, and that is nothing new.
It also seems our beloved big N wants to become a company of gimicks rather than actual substance. Two screens with no real invoation behind it DSI. A console based around a motion control system that is just as poorly implemented or inovated. I’m sad to say that bothvmy wi and ds lite sit disused from lack of purpose in design and lack of fun games to play. It’s gamecube part two.
Uh, Dude… The DS has been causing innovation for the past 5 years. To say that it hasn’t caused innovation is kind of ignorant. Look at any of the games released over that time: Elite Beat Agents, Mario and Luigi 3, Scribblenauts, Mario Kart DS, Animal Crossing WW, The World Ends With You, Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, Final Fantasy 4…
No fun games? Really? Have you not been playing any games on the DS for five years?
I agree…the DS library is stellar and not short on innovation. Very different conversation. The DSiWare thing is abysmal.
I got Elite Beat Agents, New super Mario bros, Mario Kart DS, Legend of Zelda: Phantom hourglass, Final Fantasy 3, all the Phoenix Wright games and a few other titles and I have to say I don’t see a lot of inovation in those games beside the gimmick of the touch screen of the nintendo DS.
Don’t get me wrong, all those game are goods and by far supperior to what I used to play when I was a kid but they all feel like upgrades of those games rether then new ones. I’m still waiting for my mind to be blown over this protable console… Guess my gaming standards are pretty high and I don’t know about the PSP yet.
This is exactly why I tell everyone to ignore the DSi if they have a DS at all. The PSP even has better DLC than the DSi. I get that Nintendo wants to cater to “casual” gaming but casual gaming to them seems to mean shovelware piles of crap. Even these full release titles most of the time is crap some guy in his basement could put together in a few weeks, its pathetic. Same thing goes for the Wii.
Nintendo needs to get their act together and start making quality titles and not more first party “look what our hardware gimmick can do!” games. I get there are a handful or so of REALLY good DS games, but inbetween all that are loads and loads of crap you have to sift through to find it. At least the iPhone/iPod Touch has the trial options to see if its really crap or not. I lost faith in Nintendo after the N64, the GameCube, while decent, never lived up to what they said it would be, and neither has the Wii or DS, its just printing them money and they don’t seem to care..
I once turned into a great barn owl. Obviously I was unable to tell my friends, and family of my transformation so I was in some what of a pickle.
I was once turned into a newt by a witch….. I got better though….
It’s sad to see the DSi store go this way. I was really hoping that they would open it up to indy developers. That I think would open it up to the developers who make games for the iPhone to move their already popular games to a platform with some hard button controls. And give new guys a change to develop on a powerful mobile platform.
The problem is that Nintendo comes up with this great idea and expects 3rd party developers to fulfill their plans. Where is Nintendo’s initiative to bring good stuff to the DSi store? Mario clock, really? Bring us some virtual console at least! Old school game boy games or something. The only Nintendo based stuff on DSi has been Flipnote Studio and the shovelware Scott mentioned.
YES! Thank you for voicing what I’ve been thinking since I got my DSi. There could be AWESOME games available for download. The $10 in DSi points or whatever that I got when I first bought this thing? Still sitting on my account, cause there’s been nothing that looked like it was even remotely worth buying.
By and large I would agree with you, Scott. But one title recently proved that there are gems amongst the rubble: Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again. The title sounds a bit lame, and I’m sure many have glossed over it as a result, but it is a seriously fun little puzzle/action game. Well, the “action” bit might be stretching it… It’s 800 points, so it’s in the “Premium” category, but it is worth it.
It has a bit of a Lemmings feel to it, which is a good thing, but it does it’s own thing as well, and looks great. There’s more than a few hours of official gameplay in there, and check this: you can create your own levels, and share them over Nintendo WiFi Connection or whatever it is called. There are HEAPS of user submitted levels to download, and Nintendo (it is a first party title) even released an extra 50 levels or so that way.
Especially if you still have points left in your account to spend, or you can afford to buy 1000 points, definitely dust off the DSi, wipe off the fecal matter and dog hairs, and download Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again.
FWIW, I also don’t regret buying Real Football 2009 (a not terrible soccer game), Mixed Messages is fun with the right people (in the same way any drawing based board game can be – I found it a good way to pass the time on car trips), and Pyoro is pretty fun, as is Paper Plane.
Don’t give up hope yet!
The real problem with both Nintendo and Sony are that they charge licensing fees for publishing games on their platform. So the games have to cost more in order for the publisher to make any money. You’d think with an online store of digital downloads and no retail packaging necessary, they’d be able to do more though. However, compared to Apple which doesn’t charge any licensing fee, gives away the development tools, hosts the game for you, and only asks 30% of each sale it’s almost the perfect storm against Nintendo and Sony to compete. Except for occasionally falling victim to Apple’s draconian approval process, a publisher has nothing to lose and only profit to gain for iPhone development.
I go leagues bowling every Thursday night. Many of the parents bring their little kids and almost each and every kid has a DS or DSi to keep them occupied while the parent bowls. So from what I see, the DS is still a great platform with a huge audience of pre-adolescent kids. The name Nintendo implies trust among many parents and the type of games they let their kids play.
But you’re right Scott, I don’t know why Nintendo isn’t pushing more to stay competitive and innovative. Me thinks they’re still making tons of money to be content with themselves and their target audience, so why care to rattle the cage? I don’t wish to speculate whether they’re living off borrowed time though. But for older gamers like you and I who took pride in their N64 and Color Gameboy, I guess we’ve just moved on….
Long live the iPhone/iPod touch for portable gaming!
Quick note unrelated to this post: the comment notification email sent has a minor bug where the Content-Type of the email is not set correctly to HTML, but rather to plain text, so the HTML tags, etc show up in the email, which looks a bit blah.
I don’t know if you can change a WordPress setting to make sure the email is sent as HTML, or if it is a bug in the code, but if you have time, and care, it might be worth fixing.
You could even just palm it off to someone in the community who is bound to be either a WordPress expert or a code monkey (I am the latter) to fix for you as a way of saying thanks for all the free great content you give us.
Nintendo may be out of step when it comes to online play and its online store, but I never count them out for anything. Earlier in the year I sold my DS on ebay and when a settlemnt came in that I was waiting for I got the DSi. I wanted a little bigger screen, the ability to play some music and having an extra camera around was nice. The store was one of the last things I bought it for.
The problem as I see it, is that most of the games I’d like to d/l if they were available have already been ported to the DS in some form or another. I think if they started putting up old gameboy and gameboy advance games that haven’t been ported yet, I might take a look.
If they port the original Golden Sun from the gameboy advance as a downloadable, Nintendo would be halfway forgiven by my book.
Good point Scott. I hope it gets better, but Nintendo is really dropping the ball with a lot of things this generation. What’s more, the DSi doesn’t even play Gameboy Advance games. That’s the biggest reason I was never interested in it. We may have to chalk it up as another random flop in Nintendo’s mostly positive history. I’m looking at you, Virtual Boy!
I really hope Nintendo does a better job with the next generation of consoles, as far as online content is concerned. If they continue down the family-friendly path of the Wii, however, it looks grim.
If you want to know my deepest, darkest secret… I hope their console business goes under and they’re forced to become a third party developer for other better systems. More Mario, less last-gen graphics and stick-waggling.
(I would like to note that I love the DS Lite, and have a Wii but wish there was better content on it like everyone else).
Scott you nailed it dude. I wasn’t drinking the iPhone koolaid until I got one, but now my whole stance on the thing has changed. The kind of cheap and quality content available for the iPhone vs the DSi’s download service is ridiculous.
I completely agree with you, Scott. The DSiware store SUCKS. Only 2 or 3 weeks into it they start offering things like a clock and a calculator with game characters on them. That really showed how much planning they had put into this whole store thing. When we got our tax return this spring, I took advantage of the Gamestop deal and traded in my original DS for a hefty discount on the DSi while my wife bought an iPod Touch. Yeah. She got the much better gadget.
I have never been more disappointed with Nintendo than I am with my DSi. I check Joystiq’s Wiiware/DSiWare post every week for what comes out, but when Flipnote Studio released was the first time in months I even bothered to go into the DSiWare store.
If they would just give us some virtual console GameBoy/GBA content, that would help a LOT!
I always thought that Wal-Mart would be a great place to hang out during the inevitable zombie uprising. They have enough shotguns, ammo, food, and water there to last months.
I can only say one thing :
Now you get to experience what PSN / Live!Marketplace are like outside of the USA …
At least your other platforms have an on-line store that has stuff.
Over here what little there is is overpriced (thanks Valve … ) and practically devoid of content.
I don’t actually own a DSi, but do they sell old GB/GBA games? To me it would be a HUGE selling point (especially since there is no GBA slot.:/). I would love to be able to download Pokemon Crystal or an old Megaman game or something to my DSi.
it’s not great at the moment, but it has potential to really pick up
>.> I actually agree with you, but not only the DSiWare, but the WiiWare and VC is really slacking big time (maybe not for those that did buy the Super Star Wars series).
I swear some of these journalist that goes to these gaming events just need to punch Reggie in the face. Nintendo of Japan is doing it right over there, but NoA is a farking big joke and I blame Reggie all for it.
BULLSHIT! The DSi store has some frickn awsome apps! I am on this website with the DSi browser which came from da store! And look at Real Football, and Wario Ware, and Paper Plane. They`re all awsome games. And there’s plenty more. Get a life man.
is it worth getting the r4i for the games?