aspro said:

          Like I said in my original post, if you don't know who he is don't bother looking it up, as I said in that post, it's only interesting if you know him.

EDIT: You probably did not see my original post.

no i missed it sometimes i end up  trying to catach up and i'll mess up and skip a post or two thinking i already read them or if its a long one i'll skim it

sorry about that

There will be a Catherine demo later today, that should be interesting.

damn japanese always get the cool  stuff and games before we do, i am wondering about Catherine a lot i am still not sure what the hell the game is

aspro said:

If you ever want to sharpen your mind (or go crazy) try playing a Final Fantasy from 1994 while you simultaneously play a Dragon Quest game from 1992.

I've been switching back from the SNES to the DS all day, and it's like, "Okay, I'll go to the overworld and save. Oh no, this is DQ, I have to use a Chimera to get back to the Church to save." or "I can go further I have plenty of Potions" and then finding out you are in the other JRPG, and you don;t have any "Medicinal Leaves" left.

I'm 17 hours into FF6 and 6 hours into DQ5.

at least your enjoying 2 of the greatest rpgs of all time

Kojima just tweeted this image:

Well, I'm out for a few hours, thanks for turning up and talking guys.

Catherine demo is up. Its sooo late... I'll download it.

Agnates said:

Well, this was cool capabilities wise. Seemingly. But perhaps they went too far? Maybe they're negating one of the portable benefits, which is the lower development costs. 3DS does that also, but only compared to the previous DS, it doesn't bring it to the top current level. Although, sharing tech and assets may help keep it down.

KInda lame it's so far though. Holidays. Then another year or two to see what platform gets the best support. I bought the PSP too early and kinda regretted it, it seemed to be Sony's first dud for a long time. Their first system I bought, and that happened, lol. I don't want this to happen again so I guess I'm not getting 3DS any time soon. It might be my luck and my return to Nintendo is their first portable dud ever, lol.

Agnates said:

I watched the 3DS Mercenaries trailer again and the difference doesn't seem as great now. If there is one at all. It looks at least as faithful as the Lost Planet 2 shot on the NGP. But demos like the MGS4 scene, if possible to achieve in normal conditions at decent frame rates, are certainly a step above. Anyway, it's probably all those enhanced N64 games that made me feel the 3DS was substantially inferior visually while viewing the Sony stuff. That video proves that's not the case. Unless that quality ends up being the exception rather than the rule on 3DS, but it's a quick launch title port so I don't see why.

I changed the 3DS story, I changed the link so it links to the original site. I am cutting out the middle man.

Here is an extract:

Umezu: What eats more electricity than anything in a handheld gaming device is the LCD backlight.



Iwata: Nintendo 3DS has two of those—and the upper one is for 3D.

Umezu: Right. And the 3D one has to delivery separate images to the left and right eyes. Which means that in 3D the amount of light delivered to each eye is halved. In order to make it look just as bright as usual, you have to increase the brightness of the backlight, which increases the power used by even more.



Iwata: Choosing 3D led to the need to double the graphics and increase the brightness of the backlight, so there must have been a lot of challenges with regard to power.



Umezu: I knew from the very start that the LCDs would require lots of power, so I thought we couldn't use that much for graphics. I spent quite a lot of time looking into programmable shading, but when you use that method for a handheld game system, you also have software processing in the SoC, and a number of steps become necessary for calculating the shading to render one point on the screen, so it can't keep up if the operating frequency21 isn't fast enough.



Iwata: In other words, that method eats up too much power.



Umezu: Yes. We knew that DMP's technology had the merit of calculating with the hardware, so we could cut down on the power used. 21. Operating frequency: Also known as clock rate. It signifies the rate for synchronizing the parts of a circuit.


Iwata:



DMP's technology achieves with the hardware most of the shadow calculation usually done by a programmable shader, so even a slower operating frequency can achieve the same results. With today's semiconductor technology, the frequency has a direct influence on power use, so it's very beneficial in that regard.


Umezu:



Yes. I thought DMP's technology was best for saving power, given the limits of a handheld gaming system. What's more, to save power just a little more, we prepared a power save mode for the backlight.



Umezu: As mentioned earlier, what uses the most power in a handheld gaming device is the LCD backlight, and making one screen 3D presented the problem of even more power used by the backlight. The power save mode uses a technology called active backlight. It precisely controls the brightness of the backlight according to the brightness of the screen being displayed. When the screen as a whole is dark, the backlight itself gets darker, which saves power.



Iwata: In principle, it may not be much use in a game with lots of bright screens, but if you set the backlight to bright, the more darker screens there are in a game, the greater the effect of the power save mode.



Umezu: Right. But you can't say exactly how much of an effect the power save mode is having on game processing because of the various factors that influence power use, such as how constantly the SoC is running, whether you're using the camera or wireless, and how loud the volume is set.



Iwata: Maybe you can't be exact, but how about an approximation?

Umezu: We announced the other day that the battery duration for playing Nintendo 3DS games on it is about three to five hours. When I measured it by playing several Nintendo games, with the backlight set to the brightest level and the power save mode turned off, battery duration was about three hours. But if you use the power save mode under the same conditions, it gets about 10-20% longer. And if you set the backlight to the darkest setting, the battery lasts five hours, but the power save mode makes less of a difference then.



Iwata: In other words, the brightness of the backlight has the greatest effect on battery duration.

Umezu: Right. What's more, with the backlight set as high as it will go, battery life changes about 25% according to whether you're playing in 2D or 3D.



Iwata: Yes, 3D is a battle against power use. How about wireless use? Some players may be worried about that.

Umezu: In StreetPass mode, the system isn't always communicating, so there isn't much of a drain on the battery, but games that communicate a lot through local play and online play—with the backlight set to high—have an over 10% effect on the battery.



Iwata: So it will be necessary for this system to be charged more often than for the previous systems. For that reason, we include a special charging cradle. We recommend that when players get home, they put their system there.

PSP has a similar battery like 4-5 hours, but it has no 3D screen sucking the juice out of it. Also the 3DS is around the same size ad the DSlite. It is just not possible to cram a bigger battery in there. People that want to wait for the 3DS lite, please do so, but you will wait until kingdom come. Even if Nintendo shrinks down the components, they will probably used the extra space to put in a bigger battery. Actually a 3DS XL would be much better bet, for you can actually put in a bigger battery in that. Or perhaps put in a fuel cell, for battery tech is going nowhere real fast.

Next Generation Portable. Not the final name for it.... one can only hope. It'd certainly be awkward after it's 5 years old.