It's not supposed to be good form to call out one's readers—though I am not entirely sure if the people I am calling out here are, in fact, that same group—but I am getting really irritated with a highly predictable trend in any discussion involving Nintendo's up-and-coming DSi: complaining about the camera.
In case you are lucky enough to not have been in any forum threads about the DSi, you might have missed it, but there are a very vocal group of people who are really ticked off that the DSi's camera is a VGA-resolution job. It had its unfortunate genesis in a liveblog gaffe that claimed the thing was 3 megapixels instead of 0.3. This has since been corrected, but the complaints have continued unabated.
This attitude confuses the heck out of me. These people are effectively complaining that they can't use the $170 DSi—which also goes online, downloads games, and is actually a pretty substantial upgrade all-around over the old DS that will eventually see its own library come into being in addition to playing the DS's awesome existing library—as a substitute for a much more substantial imaging device. The usual refrain I hear is that you can get a much better camera in a cell phone these days, but come on. I'm usually impressed when any cell phone camera picture looks good in the first place, no matter what resolution.
The DSi's camera is there to support the sotware. Yes, you can take still photos with it, but they're for the diary software that comes with it or the photo-manipulation toy—not for framing on your wall. Would you ask your family to pose in front of an EyeToy at Christmas-time to take your keepsake photo? No?
Then how can you possibly expect that from the DSi?
In case you are lucky enough to not have been in any forum threads about the DSi, you might have missed it, but there are a very vocal group of people who are really ticked off that the DSi's camera is a VGA-resolution job. It had its unfortunate genesis in a liveblog gaffe that claimed the thing was 3 megapixels instead of 0.3. This has since been corrected, but the complaints have continued unabated.
This attitude confuses the heck out of me. These people are effectively complaining that they can't use the $170 DSi—which also goes online, downloads games, and is actually a pretty substantial upgrade all-around over the old DS that will eventually see its own library come into being in addition to playing the DS's awesome existing library—as a substitute for a much more substantial imaging device. The usual refrain I hear is that you can get a much better camera in a cell phone these days, but come on. I'm usually impressed when any cell phone camera picture looks good in the first place, no matter what resolution.
The DSi's camera is there to support the sotware. Yes, you can take still photos with it, but they're for the diary software that comes with it or the photo-manipulation toy—not for framing on your wall. Would you ask your family to pose in front of an EyeToy at Christmas-time to take your keepsake photo? No?
Then how can you possibly expect that from the DSi?