PSX Extreme & Xbox Nerds Forums - View Single Post - 2 years later - what do you think of the DS' innovations?

Mr. SunburnMan · 05-01-2007, 05:44 AM

The DS is more than 2 years old now, and it was supposed to revolutionize handheld gaming. While it is obviously revolutionizing gaming sales (it's well under its way to be the best selling gaming device ever), do you think that the dual screen and the touch screen have changed the way you play games?

To me, the dual screen was always the least promising of both. I don't think it was a revolution, but more of a limitation of the clamshell design versus the resolution that they wanted to accomplish. It's not really handy, because you can't focus on two screens at once, but I always welcome additional screen resolution, which is what this provides. I really can't think of a game where the 2nd screen is really useful other than for the additional screen area to display more information. Can you?

The touch screen fares a bit better, in my opinion, but I still think that it's underutilized. I looked at my library yesterday, and the touch screen makes 2 of my 12 games, ouendan, and Trauma Center. The other games, not quite. Advance Wars uses it extremely well, but it's an extension of the existing controls. And it seems that most games are like that (if they feature touch screen controls at all).

This is not to harp on the DS, I think it's a wonderful gaming machine, the continuation of the GBA (which is one of my favourites). But 2 years into the machine's lifecycle, I think that these innovations used to sell the system are still not being used at their full potential. Thoughts?

05-01-2007, 05:44 AM	#1
Mr. SunburnMan I don't own a ps3 Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 4,461	2 years later - what do you think of the DS' innovations? The DS is more than 2 years old now, and it was supposed to revolutionize handheld gaming. While it is obviously revolutionizing gaming sales (it's well under its way to be the best selling gaming device ever), do you think that the dual screen and the touch screen have changed the way you play games? To me, the dual screen was always the least promising of both. I don't think it was a revolution, but more of a limitation of the clamshell design versus the resolution that they wanted to accomplish. It's not really handy, because you can't focus on two screens at once, but I always welcome additional screen resolution, which is what this provides. I really can't think of a game where the 2nd screen is really useful other than for the additional screen area to display more information. Can you? The touch screen fares a bit better, in my opinion, but I still think that it's underutilized. I looked at my library yesterday, and the touch screen makes 2 of my 12 games, ouendan, and Trauma Center. The other games, not quite. Advance Wars uses it extremely well, but it's an extension of the existing controls. And it seems that most games are like that (if they feature touch screen controls at all). This is not to harp on the DS, I think it's a wonderful gaming machine, the continuation of the GBA (which is one of my favourites). But 2 years into the machine's lifecycle, I think that these innovations used to sell the system are still not being used at their full potential. Thoughts? __________________ Last edited by Mr. SunburnMan : 05-01-2007 at 05:46 AM.