Hands-On with the Nintendo DSi

As if we didn’t need another interation of the Nintendo DS already, the DSi, which launched in Japan late last year, arrived in the rest of the world over the past weekend. The system, which looks to be the “Game Boy Color” of the original DS, has a few subtle improvements and additions from ths DS and the DSLite, from its larger screens to its two cameras.  At a time where Nintendo would usually be long overdue for a new handheld, they’ve decided to add new innovations to their current one and leave the door open for titles exclusively for this enhancement.

I actually wasn’t looking to pick a DSi up this close to launch. It just so turned out that it wasn’t going to pull a Wii and sell out for the next year and a half on launch day and that I had the funds available for it without causing too much harship. Carpe diem? I guess.

There’s not much that there is to talk about that most people don’t already know about the DSi; the shop, the cameras, the music playback capabilities, and the possibility of “dual mode” DS games that have enhanced features on the DSi and games that will exclusively play on the latest iteration of the handheld are already known by everyone.  If you’re a DSi user, you’ll be happy to know that the power button is no longer in a place where your index finger is sitting on top of it, just waiting for you to twitch and accidentially turn it off.  The DSi boasts a software power button under the control pad that is quite difficult to press.  A little nifty feature that they did with the power button is the ability to hard-reset the system by briefly pressing it. When playing a DS game, this acts as a quick way back to the DSi menu.

Speaking of which, the new DSi menu is probably the first big change you’ll notice after finishing the initial setup. The DSi menu acts as a gateway to the different applications on the system, like the DSi menu, although a tad simpler.  All your applications/channels are displayed in a line along the bottom and it takes just a simple tap to launch them.  Moving things around the menu is a lot easier than the wii, as it involves dragging the application up, finding the two apps you want to put it between, and dragging it back down. (Two strokes of the stylus, compared to the Wii menu where you might have to move things around 4-5 times to get it in the order you want.  You can also move the DS card app to wherever you want it as well, unlike the Wii menu’s disc channel.)  The top screen displays the date, time, username, volume settings, and battery power; The DSi has a legitimate battery indicator unlike the DS/Lite’s that is just a green or red battery in a corner of the top screen.  As well, it will take photos from the camera application that are specially marked and display one of them on the top screen. (You can also take a photo from the DSi menu)

The camera isn’t just there for sitting pretty, though. The camera app also includes some image manipulation features that you can use to do some wacky things with your photos.  I haven’t really dove into the camera app all that much so I don’t really know what to say about it.

The sound app is quite neat, though, and has two purposes; The first is to record a bunch of short clips for messing around with, either with its pitch/speed morpher or the different filters that are included in the program.  For me, though, the sound app shines in its music playback ability.  You can throw your music onto an SD or SDHC card (up to 32GB) and listen to your collection on the go, or even fool around with it with options similar to that in the recording portion of the application.  The only catch is that your music has to be in AAC (.m4a, .mp4, or .3gp; NOT .m4p) format, but converting can be easily done using a conversion tool such as dbPowerAmp.  Some of the visulazations can be quite nifty as well; An Excitebike visualizer is shown in the screenshot, but there is also a Super Mario Bros. one where you can use the L and R buttons to have Mario or Luigi jump and collect the coins that Lakitu leaves behind.

There’s also a little easter egg if you leave the DSi idle on the recording screen:

Another noticable addition to the DSi is the DSi shop. Pretty much, if you have a Wii and you’ve used the Wii shop, and have downloaded virtual console and WiiWare games, you probably already know what this entails.  Here is where small, digitally available  games or applications called DSiWare, will become available.  Looking a the pricing for the current applications they go for as cheap as 200 DSi points, or in upwards of 800, but there are some that are made available for free as well such as the Dsi Browser.  To celebrate the DSi’s launch, or at least to coax you into getting one, Nintendo is giving 1000 free DSi points to anyone who connects to the shop between now and October 5th.  Points cost exactly the same as their Wii counterparts; in fact, I would be willing to bet that you can use a Wii points card in the DSi shop.  Wii points cards will be shortly rebraded as “Nintendo points cards” and can be used with either system, although they’ll still be called Wii points and DSi points on their respective system.

With the games I wanted to get with my free 1k DSi points coming out next week, I ended up downloading the DSi browser, just cause it was free.  (I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Nintendo will start charging 200-500 points for it after October.)  The browser itself, although I wouldn’t know for sure, isn’t much different from what I’ve seen about the Nintendo DS browser. It’s a bit slow and cumbersome so it probably isn’t desirable unless you’re just looking over something quickly or really don’t have any other means. It fully supports Javascript, but not Flash, so although you can still navigate around sites that makes good use of AJAX, you won’t be able to pass the time on YouTube.   You can also enter text with handwriting recognition, but it does seem a bit sketchy, especially when it keeps recognizing my apostrophes as tildes, or my “h” as an “n”.  By the way, this blog looks pretty good on the DSi, as you can probably see by the screenshot.

Nintendo DS games fill the whole screen; That’s every extra pixel on the DSi’s bigger screen. However, despite the bigger screens, you won’t notice any graphical glitches or pixelation as a result.  All games (like GTA Chinatown Wars on the right) look just as good, if not better, as they would on a DS or DS lite and aren’t in any way negatively impacted by the new technology.  You may even notice the better sound quality when you’re not using headphones.  Other improvements include the ability to access a wireless network with WPA security, but it will only work with DSi applications or DSiware. (In other words, if you’re trying to play a DS game online, you’re still hooped unless you’re still using WEP security on your router.)

Praises:

• Increased audio and video quality.
• Matte finish instead of the Lite’s gloss finish means less smudges and accidential drops.
• The ability to use your DSi like a music player
• DSiWare, although small, could eventually open the door to a virtual console for handheld systems. (DO IT, NINTENDO)
• Pretty robust camera functionality

Gripes:

• The touch screen feels a bit rough initially.
• Uses a less powerful battery than the DSLite, resulting in reduced battery time.
• Internal storage is only 256MB, half the size of the Wii’s. This comes out to just over 1000 blocks; Right off the bat the DSi browser takes up 96 blocks, nearly 10% of the DS’ internal storage. Didn’t Nintendo learn from the Wii’s lack-of-storage issues? (Just to note, though, the last DSi menu update happened well before Wii menu update 4.0, so it’s always possible that they’ll try to work in an SD card launching functionality.)
• Do we really need another music player or camera? (The DSi’s selling point for me was DSiware, really.)
• Quite a large number of launch units are defective. Although this is normal for any system (and definitely not bad as the 360) there is a staggering amount of launch units out there with misaligned screens and some with loose hinges.  My DSi has a very slightly crooked touch screen but as I learned, it’s not unusual to see this even on the DS or DSlite.

So, yeah. I’m thuroughly enjoying my DSi. I haven’t taken advantage of it too much yet, but I’m hoping that I’ll get some good mileage out of it.  I certainly like what Nintendo did with it; Although not all the technology is needed, they seem to be getting closer to their goal of making the DS an “all-purpose device.”

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