Jugaccino

Just when you thought technology was going to be bringing you better graphics, faster processors and the all round gaming experience that you know you deserve…they bring out books.

eBooks to be exact, and to be honest it’s a smart move by the DS.  Nintendo are launching their answer, much cheaper answer by the way (although not quite as competitive), to the Sony e-reader we’ve all been hearing about.  The release is a “game” that will allow its users to flick through the pages of a number of world changing pieces of literature from authors the likes of Shakespeare, Bronte and Doyle.  Please note that the word game was in quotations because, come on, it’s no game.  I don’t foresee many users ‘reading’ against their friends to see who can get to page 142 in “Romeo and Juliet” the fastest.

The game will hold a hundred different pieces of literature from what Nintendo have decided to be the most important and influential books through the ages.  What better name can be afforded to the game than: “100 Classic Book Collection”.  Right to the point…and why not.  Nintendo have got the market all to themselves it seems and they can do no wrong.  It’s as if they are testing the users of the DS to see what they can provide on a cartridge and then they’ll sit back and see who buys it.  To be honest though, I would.  It seems like a great idea, i love reading.  Literature is arguable the backbone to civilisation, after fire and the wheel.  Without classics like these, we would be a totally different world today.  And what better way to hold 100 classic novels, than in your DS.  Have you ever seen 100 books piled on top of each other…now think about how heavy they would be to pick up…no fun i’ll tell you.

Nintendo have decided to launch the game on Boxing Day.  I think they have a romanticised idea that everyone with a DS will be sitting around a fire after a hefty Christmas Day of eating, drinking and general merriment, and Grandad will pick up his copy of the DS (probably the new ‘ice blue’ one he got in America because he’s just that cool).  He’ll flip open his DS, remove his stylus and begin Jane Austen’s Emma at Chapter One.  Errr…maybe not, but for £18 it seems like one hell of a bargain when you look at what Sony’s offering us.

So what is Sony offering us?  £200 for their e-reader for a metallic brick looking contraption, where you can, you guessed it, read e-books.  Not very exciting when you think of what else you can do when you’ve finished your e-book on the DS…Zelda, Guitar Hero, whatever.  Sony, will you give me some games to play when I’m finished reading some books?  I don’t think so.  But it’s not all roses and snow flakes for the DS, because Sony’s console offers up a much better screen for you to read from, after all it is designed specifically for reading.  Another pretty valuable point is that what happens when you’ve finished all 100 e-books on the DS in 2022 (or January 1st if you’re a fast reader)…that’s it, there’s nothing more for you to read.  With the e-reader it’s fairly obvious that you’re only limited to reading what has been turned into an e-book and with the whole process of e-reading coming into its element, soon there won’t be a book that won’t be available.

But can you hold the Sony e-reader like a book…i don’t think so.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Nintendo DS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.