DSiWare is one year old today
The DSi's download service, DSiWare, is celebrating its first birthday today. The service has featured games such as Starship Defense, Trajectile, Flipnote Studio and the Art Style series. It's interesting to think that the service is a whole year old.
Personally, I've never been too impressed with the DSi or its DLC service. The console seems like a stepping stone, a platform for Nintendo to try out experiments like handheld DLC. In my opinion it's missing a huge piece of the DLC puzzle that made the Wii successful: a Virtual Console. The DSiWare launch a year ago was pretty sparse but a back catalog of old Game Boy software would have alleviated that. As it stands there are no classic games on DSiWare, and we haven't seen a lot of compelling software on the DSi from Nintendo or otherwise, at least no killer apps that really make it worth the purchase.
With the 3DS coming within a year, I'm glad I stuck with my DS Lite. The DSi might have had some new ideas but I'm willing to bet that the next hardware generation will have a lot more and they'll be much better implemented and supported. Nintendo seems to do this with their handhelds toward the end of their life, iterate the daylights out of the hardware with two or three experimental increments to get the most out of the line. I'm not knocking anyone who picked up a DSi or the recently released XL, but in some cases it's just better to wait.
Nintendo News: Nintendo DSiWare Celebrates Its First Anniversary
REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- In just one year’s time, the Nintendo DSiWare™ service has offered more than 150 downloadable games and applications that illustrate the service’s reputation as a playground for creativity.
Trajectile™, Starship Defense™ and Link ‘n’ Launch™ are just a few examples of original games published by Nintendo exclusively for the Nintendo DSi™ system that have been well-received by reviewers. Art Style™ series games like Art Style: Pictobits™ and Art Style: DIGIDRIVE ™ also showcase the system’s versatility.
Flipnote Studio™ is among the best reviewed software of all time for the Nintendo DS™ family of systems, while Mario vs. Donkey Kong™: Minis March Again! is a perennial fan favorite.
Third-party developers, big and small, have taken advantage of the unique properties of the Nintendo DSi system to create some outstanding software. Glow Artisan won the Independent Games Festival’s Best Mobile Game Design Award, while titles like DRAGON QUEST® WARS™, Mighty Flip Champs and Dark Void Zero all continue to deliver fun game play.
Nintendo DSiWare has a lot of exciting original, exclusive titles on the horizon, including Nintendo’s Photo Dojo™, which uses the Nintendo DSi camera to put players right in the midst of a side-scrolling street brawl. With Nintendo’s 2-D shooting game, Metal Torrent™, players try to convert a shower of opponents’ bullets into cubes that, when collected, increase their score and fill an energy meter that powers special weapons. And X-Scape™ from Nintendo immerses players in an exploratory adventure involving more than 20 planets.
Upcoming third-party games include Earthworm Jim from Gameloft, Tetris Party Live from Hudson, Surviving High School from EA and Frogger Returns from Konami.
For more information about Nintendo DSiWare, please visit www.nintendodsi.com.
