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| Nintendo DS | | (And The Primal Urge To Touch) | | 01 March 2006 | | When Nintendo announced that their new console - the "DS" - would feature a touch-screen, people laughed, and the word gimmick was thrown around like a Gardener's Delight at La Tomatina. But the subsequent astronomical sales figures show that The Big 'N' has really caught on to something.
When our two-year-old says he wants to "look" at something, we often find ourselves saying yes, with the caveat that he mustn't touch, but lately we've started to realise we're wasting our breath. He can't help himself - touch is too fundamental to his sense of the world around him, and he can't not touch any more than he can not breathe.
It is the "primal urge" that Nintendo have caught onto with the DS - the touch screen allows us to interact with games at a level we've never experienced before, and it feels so natural that it is as-if we've been doing it for years. One game - Kirby's Power Paintbrush - allows you to draw platforms on the screen to bounce a ball around. Another - Animal Crossing - is a "Sims" type game, which allows you to immerse yourself in a virtual world which you can almost "feel" your way through.
Add to this, quality non-touch games like the cartoon-racer Mario Kart DS, with (are you listening Microsoft?) FREE on-line play which "just works", and you have a console which we already feel has become indispensable.
And the British public clearly agrees - over one million 'DS' consoles have been sold in the UK alone - and that is in a market that Nintendo does not normally consider one of its strongholds. It might not have the huge designer-screen of the PlayStation Portable, or the sleek good-looks of an I-Pod, but it has captured the imagination of games designers and the public alike, and we can't wait to touch some more! |
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The point is we are all connected... through love... through loneliness... through one lamentable lapse in judgment!
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