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| DS Myths Debunked: Ruthlessly earning the right to call myself a journalist |
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Planning on keeping track of appointments on your DS? Planning hold out for the next Game Boy in 2006? Hate to break it to you... |
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There seem to be two very persistent rumors about the system with two screens. You'll see these Nintendo DS rumors repeated on message boards, on rumor sites, on news aggregators...all over the place. The fact of the matter is, however, that neither of them is true.
The V-Pocket Turns the Nintendo DS into a PalmOS PDA...or does it?
First, there's the V-Pocket. If you're not familiar with this rumor, supposedly Nintendo is going to release a PDA module of some kind for the Nintendo DS, adding a Palm OS environment. Different versions of the rumor allege that the DS will cease to have game support after this point. Thing is, it's not true. Nintendo hasn't made any deals with PalmSource (owners of PalmOS), and doesn't plan to drop game support for the DS.
It all starts, as many rumors do, with a bit of fact. In early February of this year, it came to light that, in December of 2004, Nintendo registered a pair of patents in Japan only: the V-Pocket and the PCGP. Speculation ran rife, but the most common assertion was that the V-Pocket was an alternate name for the Play-Yan, the movie/music adapter for the Game Boy Advance and DS. Spong, however, wasn't satisfied with this explanation, and made their own. (Link is a Google cache; Spong sabotages direct linking to their articles.) For those unfamiliar with them, Spong is an infamous game "news" site, known mostly for making up amusing but obviously false game news.
Spong usually gets laughed off by the game community as a whole, but this time someone took the bait. GamerCentric would repeat this bit of Spong make-believe as true, in an unsourced news post. From there, it would make it out into the wild, as games.Slashdot, Kotaku, Evil Avatar, and others would link to the GamerCentric article.
It's nonsense, though. Spong's dubious reliability aside, Gamespot would, in a Rumor Control column, contact both Nintendo and PalmSource (the owners of Palm OS), both of whom denied the rumors. If you'd like to take a look at a list of PalmSource's licensee partners, well, here it is. (Before you get worked up about Sony's place on that list, Sony up until recently produced a line of Palm OS PDAs, known as the CLIÉ. It was cancelled, due to a combination of declining interest in PDAs and a desire to keep from competing with the PSP.)
All that said, apparently a company called Summitsoft is working on a personal organizer app for the DS. It wouldn't run PalmOS (and also wouldn't be a separate OS, so no extra apps likw a web browser or whatever), but hey! Calendar and address book!
Game Boy Evolution to Replace GBA and DS in 2006? Hardly.
Secondly, there's the Game Boy successor, currently known as the Game Boy Evolution in fan circles. Supposedly Nintendo is going to release a killer new Game Boy in 2006, usually with whatever fantasy feature the speaker wants (or thinks will sound impressive.) Fantasy rumor it is, however, started from some leaks about the Nitro project (the code name for the DS) and spread by the usual candidates: The IGN boards, N-Sider, Spong, and Matt Casamassina of cube.IGN.
As with many rumors, it starts with the IGN boards. The archives are barricaded behind the IGN Insider wall, but a user by the name of Paladin (known for creating mockups of fictional systems for personal amusement) created a mockup of the "Game Boy Evolution," a supposed Game Boy system that could play both GBA and Game Cube games. The user didn't make any bones about it being made-up, and it wasn't the first time he had made a mock-up like this.
This image would resurface in a Sympatico.ca games news post on January 16, 2004, talking about Nintendo's Game Boy Enhanced, which supposedly could play GBA and GC games. (The original Sympatico.ca newspost is gone, but evidence of its existence can be found in this uk.games.video.gameboy Usenet post. Steven Kent would even mention this Game Boy Enhanced in a GameSpy article, months after its introduction.) Sympatico.ca's games section was usually pretty on the ball, but it looks like this one was a mistake, and the links to this article would get the term "Game Boy Enhanced" out there. It never really took, until Nintendo Watch put their own spin on it.
A post on Nintendo Watch on April 20, 2004, revives this rumor in a new form, and marks the first use of the term "Game Boy Evolution." (The first reference to the "Game Boy Evolution" on Usenet is a cut and paste of this article.) The hallmarks of the Game Boy Enhanced rumor are here, most notably the GameCube-style discs. It's telling that the source, "The Star Child," never reports anything to Nintendo Watch again.
N-Sider gets wind of this blog post and runs with it, publishing an article embellishing the Game Boy Evolution with some obviously fake features. (Note that the GameCube Next info is identical to the info in the Nintendo Watch article, however. N-Sider doesn't date their articles, but Engadget linked to it on May 20, 2004, so it likely was posted on the 19th or 20th.) For example, I don't think I need to tell you how Nintendo would feel about a device that would allow you to download your old games onto a hard drive. This is where the Game Boy Evolution rumor really starts to pick up steam, as N-Sider's claims aren't obviously fake, like the people who were fooled by the Game Boy Enhanced mockup.
Then Matt Casamassina of cube.IGN stepped in. In his January 20, 2005 mailbag, he fanned the flames by talking about "some things he's heard" about the Game Boy Evolution. He basically runs down the list of the things the N-Sider article mentions, but this time it's mentioned specifically as a 2006 follow-up to the DS. Bear in mind, cube.IGN reruns some N-Sider content and I'm given to understand that the staffs of both sites are on personal terms, so Matt likely simply got his "inside information" from reading N-Sider.
If Matt's speculation weren't enough, some of the usual suspects had to get in on the game. In February, as part of the V-Pocket mess, Spong announced (Google cache) that Nintendo would unveil a GBA successor at E3 2005, and turn the DS into a PDA. This is extemely suspect, as the V-Pocket/PalmOS rumor was just that, a rumor. In March, industry analyst firm PJ McNealy predicted a new Game Boy would be released by the end of 2005, and that it would likely be announced at Game Developers Conference 2005. Well, GDC came and went, and PJ McNealy hasn't brought up their inaccurate predictions again. (Remember, PJ McNealy and other analysts are in the business of guessing; they don't have any info you don't.)
I don't think it's unlikely that Nintendo is working on a successor to the Game Boy Advance, especially given the official stance that the DS isn't a replacement for the GBA (the so-called "three pillar" strategy.) However, the Game Boy Evolution rumor as it exists now is based on a year-old, pre-DS bit of admitted rumor-mongering that seems to have been mostly based on a mockup and stat sheet that was entirely composed of wishful thinking on the part of an artistically talented IGN board member.
The power of a lie or a mistake repeated over and over again is surprising, and these two rumors have surprising longevity. That said, Spong and Matt C notwithstanding, they're just rumors. Don't believe them, don't worry about them, and for crying out loud, don't post them on any message board anyone with any sense has to read. The internet will thank you. |
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