With news of the new PSP coming out, will be dropping the UMD and would be supporting digital downloads. Is the DSiWare a test for Nintendo to figure out that this is the future, potentially dropping the DS Card?

Do you guys see any problem if Nintendo dropped the DS cards?

If you guys think that digital downloads are too much for the DSi, look at the DSiware game released today. Real Football (Soccer) It's a full pack game, and only missing a little bit from the DS Card.

There's a new PSP coming out? If you are referring to this, it is only a mock-up by a fan. There is no news of such a device that I know of.

I might buy one if it were real though. I prefer downloads to discs. It'd be nice if the next DS went that route.

The only problem is, that the retail stores will be no more.

this is the "new" PSP Go they are saying http://www.t3.com/images/variants/PSP_go_mock_w500.jpg

The URL even says "mock." Unless you have an article from a reliable site with sources cited, it's unfortunately almost certain to be fake. I would think big sites like psp.ign.com would have picked up on this.

And retail stores would live on. Consoles probably won't go all-download for awhile, if ever. Not everyone has a strong enough internet connection, if a connection at all (poor souls), to download huge games like Metal Gear Solid 4, etc. Handhelds would be more reasonable to expect people to get to wireless hot spots to download. So retail stores would still have used game trade and consoles.

Hmm, I dunno. I'd had a pretty bad feeling if there was only DSiWare - at least with the system Nintendo has right now (absolutely NO possibility to transfer your account). Many people don't, but honestly I thinkg the system Microsoft got on their Xbox 360 is great: You got one device where you can use all your downloaded stuff without anything - but you can still use it on another console when you log in with your account.

All consoles are moving toward digital distribution. What we're seeing currently is the transition phase. The period where the console makers continue to support the existing distribution channels while reaching out to build new ones. The DSi is built with sufficient hardware for the task. By the next generation I expect card media to be legacy at best.

The Wii on the other hand, ended up with digital downloads as a sort of tacked-on idea. Even the 512MB of internal storage was last-minute. (Originally the Wii was to include a "menu" disc.) So the next generation of the Wii will probably still have optical storage, but the generation after that will ditch discs altogether.

i like having the owner ship of a game on a disk/chip and not on a file that can be deleted. and if there was no disks/chips people would want to be constantly upgrading there hard drive's for more storage.

and the game's on a online shop are ment to be small so you dont worry about having a bigger hard drive and more SD cards

Constant upgrades aren't that big of a deal. I have 3 SD Cards for my systems right now. (1 for Wii, 1 for DSi, and 1 left extra. ) You just keep some stuff on each card and don't worry too much about it.

and the game's on a online shop are ment to be small so you dont worry about having a bigger hard drive and more SD cards

Tell that to Steam. They allow redownloads and their games are retail-sized titles.

i like having the owner ship of a game on a disk/chip and not on a file that can be deleted.

please dont encorage nintendo

You know even if the file gets deleted, Nintendo keeps track of games you download. I remember one time, i deleted a channel by mistake, and i was able to download it with no problem. Actually before the 4.0 update, that was the way to solve the storage problem haha. I think for the DSi it makes sense to have downloaded games. Because either way you can lose the little card(like eating it by mistake) =P

i sill like having the owner ship of a game on a disk/ds card. and whats the big deal about having to go to a store to buy the game like walmart?

I'm still not used to discs.

get over it your keeping your disk games >:[]

I think downloads make more sense for the video game industry because it cuts out the expense of retailers (who normally get half the money you spend on anything) plus it eliminates the expenses of making the carts and packaging and shipping them, and the expense of Internet bandwidth in comparison isn't very much. The other benefit is that it eliminates the used game market so that they can sell more copies of games, which might also be a plus for the consumer since it's often hard to find games once they go out of production but a download service could keep them available for the lifetime of the system.

The main problem I see is that apparently the majority of people never hook their systems up to the Internet because either they don't have wi-fi setup or can't be bothered to connect their systems to it, but I'm sure people would figure this out if it were the only way to get games. The other big issue is the sizes of the games that can be released, because no one wants to download GBs of information over the web and wait forever, but personally I find my enjoyment of games has little to do with the file size because so far I've been playing the WiiWare games more than the retail ones -- sometimes things are better if you keep them simple. Downloads probably make the most sense for handhelds because people have lower expectations for the games, don't want to carry carts around with them, and can easily find wi-fi somewhere if they don't have home wi-fi.

The only thing thats bad about downloadable software is it's small..but nintendo plans to release DSi "enhanced Game Cards"
which will be playable by all DS Systems but When played on the DSi ..you can do more.