R.J. Mical Talks About Nintendo DS
1up have an interview with R.J. Mical (Co-creator of the 3D0 and Lynx hardware platforms), in which he talks about the Nintendo DS.
1UP: How about the Nintendo DS -- the dual-screened portable?
Mical: It looks like an interesting technology. This is going to be expensive, though, with two different displays...that's an interesting looking technology. It would be fun to play with a system like that, where you could incorporate that sort of stuff into games, but I'm going to guess that 99.9% of the games won't even use the touchpad thing anyway -- gamers don't want that. Gamers don't want to poke around with a stylus on the screen to play the game. They want joysticks, and they want fire buttons. They don't want a little stylus.
At Fathammer, this company I was working at a couple of years ago where we were doing this 3D engine, we had this game system that would run on a bunch of different handheld devices including handhelds that had touch screens with styluses. The way you'd interact with the game was by tapping on the screen with the stylus, and more than one screen was broken by excited players tapping on it a little too hard. In fact, the running joke in the office was that we were actually funded by the screen makers; they could increase their sales, because indeed, people were always breaking their screens.
1UP: How about the Nintendo DS -- the dual-screened portable?
Mical: It looks like an interesting technology. This is going to be expensive, though, with two different displays...that's an interesting looking technology. It would be fun to play with a system like that, where you could incorporate that sort of stuff into games, but I'm going to guess that 99.9% of the games won't even use the touchpad thing anyway -- gamers don't want that. Gamers don't want to poke around with a stylus on the screen to play the game. They want joysticks, and they want fire buttons. They don't want a little stylus.
At Fathammer, this company I was working at a couple of years ago where we were doing this 3D engine, we had this game system that would run on a bunch of different handheld devices including handhelds that had touch screens with styluses. The way you'd interact with the game was by tapping on the screen with the stylus, and more than one screen was broken by excited players tapping on it a little too hard. In fact, the running joke in the office was that we were actually funded by the screen makers; they could increase their sales, because indeed, people were always breaking their screens.
