With there still being a few more days until the new DSiXL hits the stores in Japan, there are already rumors spreading about the next Nintendo handheld, or the "DS2" as some are calling it. The Digital Foundry blog over on Eurogamer has some interesting things to say about what this new system might hold for us, as well as the competition it could face in Sony’s new handheld. Here are a few snippets from the article.
These sources, intimately involved with the alliances and deal-making within their sector, effectively confirm the reported allegiances between Nintendo/NVIDIA and Sony/IMG, but also provide a fascinating insight into the kinds of devices the new handhelds will be, and the power levels we can expect…
So, how does the Tegra 2 we expect to see in the new Nintendo handheld stack up? Let’s just say that it is a significant improvement, and a colossal jump in performance compared to the current DS. While the amount of vertex shader units remains the same, TMUs and pixel shaders are doubled, and as the chip will be manufactured at a physically smaller size (40nm perhaps, versus the current Tegra’s 65nm), we can expect a reasonable bump in clock speed too. Our sources can only speculate at this point, but suspect anything up to 300MHz is possible, depending on just how much the platform holders want to concentrate on battery power. The faster the chip, the more impact it has on battery life…
Projections that the machine will match the power and exceed the Wii’s capabilities are not unrealistic.
If this new system could indeed rival the Wii in power then that would be amazing. Having a handheld with capabilities that are alongside a current gen console? There are a ton of possibilities that could be explored with power like that. Hopefully that won’t keep them from continuing to produce 2D games along with the 3D games that will likely come with these capabilities. It’s also unsure as to whether Nintendo will stick with the dual screens and the touch function, but with as popular as the DS has been it seems highly unlikely that they will opt for something different than that.
It will be interesting to see what news is released and/or leaked in the following months. Right now speculation is that we could possibly see the new handheld by the 2010 Christmas season.
Portable Wii games? SIGN ME UP.
Portable waggle would never work. But I know they mean just in terms of graphics and size.