Honestly... you're saying you're not sure if it's a good thing for DS to be the best- and fastest selling games machine in history? Please. -_-' Some people seem to want to spin everything. Yeah sure, if DS doesn't sell at least 270 million (double that of PS2) it won't be as successful as the PS2! You actually believe that, then? Come on, man, that's, just... weird. XD By your logic, PSP's HW sales would be the worst failure in the history of gaming, 'cos it's only sold 55 million.

Whether or not DS will still be selling 5 years from now is irrelevant. Fact is, by then it'll already have passed the PS2 by a LOT. What's more, it's been highly profitable for Nintendo from the beginning. Who cares if it'll sell for 5, 10 or 15 years, as long as it's highly successful and profitable? We all know the PS2 has sold as long as it has because PS3 didn't live up to expectations. If PS3 had been a raging success from launch (as predicted by a lot of people), PS2 would've died off much sooner, and PS3 would've taken its place.

I don't really believe in the same failure/win crap the everyone else seems to believe in. The DS can't be a failure at this point, nor really can the PSP be a failure. I was merely saying that when comparing the PS2 vs the DS, one should look at what each type of game device the two things are. Of course the DS sells faster than the PS2 did, its a portable device. The question i'm asking is, is it selling as fast a portable device _could_ or is lacking something that would make it sell 3 times faster than the PS2. By my logic the PSP certainly isn't matching the potential curve.

Or to put it simply, everyone else is all goo goo impressed about DS sales, i'm not. I'm merely more interested in how its doing, how will it be doing in the future, will it have a 10 year life span, etc. Also we should keep a keen eye on the difference between the DS and the DSi, which imo are two different devices.

dharh said: jarrod said: dharh said: Take a closer look at the memory. 4mb of memory for the DS and 2(main)+1(vid)+.5(sount)=3.5mb of memory for the PS1. That doesn't seem like far less memory to me. Also the highest reached polygon count of the PS1 was about 150k textured lit polygons, though SONY () said the theoretical output was 1 million 'flat, unshaded, unlit polygons.' Ultimately its the DS additional features which limit the DS to match raw power of PS1 and PSP. The wireless, the 2 screens, the touch sensitivity, the lockout limit on polygons, the smaller media.  Of course the DSi trounces all of those systems. No, 150k textured was the original peak N64 figure (later revised down to 100k).  Peak PS1 was 180k textured polys (revised down from 500k), peak Saturn was 200k textured "quads" (original figure, never revised).  None of them were "in game" figures, none of the manufacturers actually gave "in game" specs until Nintendo with GameCube.  Also, I was off on the DS "in game" figure, it's 120k.  It also has a higher pixel fill rate (30 million/sec versus just 4000/sec for PS1).  The big advantage for DS 3D comes it in having hardware Z-buffering however, which keeps polygons more stable and "in order" and also allows a lot of post processing effects that'd be impossible on PS1.  It's basically a class ahead of it for 3D (like N64 was). Also, I was only comparing main RAM.  DS also has a 656KB video buffer, 512KB dedicated for texture memory, 64KB work RAM for the ARM9, 32KB for the ARM7 and 256KB flash for the OS and WiFi settings.  Plus, DS is RAM expandable, unlike PS1.   edit: DS does have a lockout ceiling for polys though (the 120k figure).  This is to ensure locked framerates (120k pps is for 60 fps).  Sega's Model 2 board (which was used for VF2 and Sega Rally) actually used a similar locked limit method. You bring up N64, Saturn, why exactly? Highest count I found in a PS1 game was 150k, but if you've got a better game I ain't gonna argue. And actually the pixel count of the DS vs PS1 needs a closer look as well. The DS has a max 1024x1024 texture size of pixels or 1048576 pixels. The PS1 on the other hand has max 4000 8x8 pixels or 256000 pixels. While thats 4 to 1, its again, the polygon limit that gives the DS the disadvantage (in that department anyway).

I just brought up Saturn and N64 for relative figures of same class hardware.  BTW, what game did you find 150k textured, shaded polys in, and what was the framerate?  My understanding was that PS1 games tended to peak around 90k pps @ 30 fps. I thought Tekken 3 was good example of a high end title @ 60 fps though (ranging 60-80k pps), you actually found something better?

The DS locked ceiling is in place to ensure stable framerates (like previous Sega arcade hardware), I'd view it less as a disadvantage and more as a guide. Plus DS throws tons of 3D effects at you "for free" (cellshading, gouraud shading, environment mapping, shadow volumes, specular lighting, alpha blending, fog, etc) and even had a crude T&L engine with 4 "free" directional lights and even ST3C texture compression.  DS' 3D spec was basically designed to be the anti-N64 (which took major performance hits the more effects you piled on), it really is the all around most capable system for 3D when compared to similar class consoles (N64, PS1, Saturn) and DS would rank only behind Saturn in 2D capability.  I'd say the proof is in the pudding though, looking at high end 3D DS RPGs like FF Gaiden or DQIX or SaGa2 or Ninokuni, and they pretty much blow away anything comparable on PS1 or Saturn technically.

I also found the peak transform figures for each by googling, PS1 is 1.5m verticies/sec while DS is 4m verticies/sec.

The real downfall for DS 3D imo isn't the above-PS1-in-game polygon ceiling.  It's in it method for texture filtering, which is fixed point (resulting in those "blocky" looking textures) and lacks any bi-linear filtering (which N64 at least supported).  Considering the screen size, Nintendo likely figured the performance hit wasn't worth the trade off, but it'd have been nice to have the option imo.

Hmm, well, people's opinions differ, I guess. If you're not impressed by DS sales, then that's fine, but I'm quite sure you're about the only person on earth who thinks so.

Of course there's a difference between handhelds and consoles, but the difference not THAT significant. Imo, when a machine's topping the sales charts week after week, month after month and year after year it's really irrelevant to question whether it *could* sell more. Of course it could, if people had more money to spend, if there were even more quality games for it, if there wasn't an economic crisis, if babies could play it, if developers would start making games for the thing exclusively... But those are all irrelevant and nonsensical.

Are you also unimpressed by PS2's sales? 'Cos you should be, you should ask the same questions about that one, yes it's sold fine, but what would have to happen for it to sell 3 times as much? Could it? Could it top 300 million? Come on.

You're gonna want to throttle me, but now I can't find my citation for the polygon count of chrono cross, which beats tekken 3.

Anyway, back on topic... so what should Sony about PSP exactly? I figured GO and the shift to digital would be their course, but that seems to have gone nowhere fast with GO tanking, their digital library being spotty and debacles with "rights" preventing high profile games like Kingdom Hearts from even leaving UMD. Most software releases seem to be underperforming or outright flopping, and PSP's been looking at arguably it's best 3rd party software lineup ever starting from last summer to next summer (Dissidia, Soulcalibur, MHFU, Valkyria 2, PSP2, Tekken 6, Rock Band Unplugged, AC Bloodlines, Dante's Inferno, Last Ranker, MGS Peace Walker, KH BBS, Gundam Vs Next+, GTA Chinatown Wars, Ys VII, etc, etc)... what can Sony do to reverse software trends and keep publishers/retailers on board? Can they do anything?

Chrono Cross runs @ 30 fps though.  Even if it were 150k pps (which I'd seriously doubt, the backgrounds are all prerendered and the characters/objects aren't that numerous or complex, even in battle) it'd be less than Tekken 3's 80k pps @ 60 fps.

It's just a difference in interest. I guess I _should_ be impressed, but im too busy being interested in the statistics. So i'm not really impressed by PS2 sales, rather i'm interested in the PS2 sales curves as it relates to other consoles. For instance the trend PS3 has compared to PS2 and how the Wii is significantly higher, the PS3 flagging behind, and the X360 is even worse. It's just a difference in interest.

"My original point, really, was just that FFVII/FFVIII was on the PSP and thus made it superior  (I wasn't even thinking about PSP/PS1 being more capable than the DS, at the time)."

So its the simple fact that you can download them and play them and you cant do that with the DS, not that they were a unique experience or not possible on the DS.

Cool.  But that's not what he originally said.

"There are things the PSP does far better than the DS does. I can play FFVII and FFVIII on my PSP, that alone makes it better than the DS."