Why I Wont Be Buying a DSi
By Gavin Allmond on Sunday, April 5th 2009
The latest must have hand-held was made available to North Americans on the 5th of April for $169.99 (£114.69). It was available to me, a funny accented Brit, on the 3rd for a totally fair £149.99 ($222.32) and I had no idea. The seemingly complete lack of advertising from the usually money-grabbing Nintendo has genuinely surprised me.
The new DSi sports larger screens, an SD card reader and two cameras. But at the cost of removing the GBA slot-2 the old DS machines had. Your old DS game carts will work fine in the DSi. But now legitimate DS gamers will have to be careful when buying games as newly developed games will be one of two formats. Only one of which work on the old DS systems.
For what is essentially an upgraded version of a system, there seems to be a lot of sacrifices being made. The cameras and wider screens are obvious improvements and I’m curious to see how game developers will integrate the cameras in to their games. But given the choice of (lets face it) gimmicky flail-about-in-front-of-your-camera games or the entire GBA back-catalogue up to this point the choice will always be clear.
Nintendo’s piracy trouble has already caught up to the DSi. Of course old flashcarts are no longer compatible. Which was saddening to me as a heavy R4 user. But it didn’t take long for our far-Eastern friends (whom the DSi has been available to since November last year) to sort that out for us.
If you are considering buying a DSi my advice to you is this: Don’t. It doesn’t really offer that much and that which it does offer isn’t worth giving up on the older systems for. And even if you’re one of Nintendo’s favourite market: the casual gamer, buy this instead.
(Prices and exchange rates of 5th April 2009)
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I brought a DSi this weekend and I’m quite happy with my purchase. I still had the orignal DS and needed to upgrade, I don’t own any GBA so for me this is fine. If I do want to want to get involved in some GBA action, i’ll grab a Micro becuase really I want one anyway.
If you’ve already got a DS lite then this would be a pointless upgrade and yes I agree everybody should still go out and get the Resident Evil arcade pack regardless.
I’m getting one, I’m still running on my launch DS so I’m well overdue an upgrade. Plus the thought of a portable Virtual Console and the potential of DSiWare is just too big for me to ignore.
The loss of the GBA slot isn’t a big deal to me, I bought a new GBA to play Pokemon Yellow so I have that for my GBA games, I’d imagine most of the people who are serious about their GBA games would have already done the same.
Finally, you mention as a plus point that the DS’ firmware has already been cracked to allow piracy. Fucking seriously? I’m constantly frustrated and angered by the way people use the R4 (‘its just for backups’ yeah right you pirating fucktard) and I think that bringing attention to it is extremely irresponsible.
That point also brings an issue to the GBA point, as anyone truly annoyed by the loss of a GBA slot would now buy that new flashcard to hold GBA games.
It wouldn’t be useful for me to grab a DSi, but my mom was still using a phat, so I had her trade in that for a new one. I do have a GB SP and a few other GBA compatible system so I may end up picking it up if it’s worth it.
GameStation had a little set up for it last time I went in. A video of people having fun (in the way all people have fun in the advert universe, by sort of swaying back and forth into each other with stupid smiles on thier faces) narrated by a woman with a soothing, reasuring voice who explained the new features.
I had to quickly walk away before the apathy made my knees melt.
I don’t understamd why people are needing an upgrade, if your ds is broken then fair enough, as i figure if mine ever broke and i had to get a new one i probably would get a DSi, but to go out and buy a new handheld when you have the same thing already doesn’t make sense.
Also does this now make games like guitar hero defunct as nobody can play it on a DSi due to having no GBA port. I’m sure there are more games that use this similarly, i just havn’t played any.
Yes it does make Guitar Hero On Tour defunct effectively, though I doubt many people will be shedding tears over that fact given how painful it is to play.