Dear Reader:
Visteon press conference (the FULL story!)
What an amazing experience we had today. Our first conference of CES started the day off with a bang, and provided us with great opportunities for the future. Rather then ramble on about that; let’s get to the Nintendo news!
Nintendo has partnered with Visteon Corporation to bring the Gameboy Advance to the big(ger) screen. These two companies have been working together to bring consumers the Dockable Entertainment platform feature Gameboy Advance. The unit plugs into a dock on the ceiling of your car, which then releases a drop down screen. On the side of the unit is the slot for GBA games, which you can easily pop in and out. Once you start up a game, you get to enjoy GBA games on a 10.2 inch screen. The demo unit we say today wasn’t running at full capacity as far as resolution is concerned, but from what we saw, the games looked impressive. The unit also allows for the hookup of a traditional Gameboy Advance so that you can enjoy two player gaming. Nintenho and I will be heading out to North Carolina with the family this summer, and this unit would make the trip a LOT more enjoyable.
The audio options with the unit were definitely impressive. We found out that you can use the unit with wireless headphones, so that you can enjoy your favorite game’s music and sound while sitting back in your seat. Even better then that, you can have the audio from your GBA games running through your car’s speakers via the radio. Imagine sitting in the back seat of a friend’s car, and rocking out to music from your favorite GBA games!
The controller interface to play GBA games comes by way of an infrared controller. As you can see in our flickr pictures, the controller may look a little awkward. Rest assured that the controller is very comfortable, and equally easy to use. During our playtime with the unit, we had picked up the controller and were up and playing in a matter of seconds. The responsiveness of the controller was spot on, which is of course, important. The only complaint we have is with the amount of face buttons. The controller gives you the options of 3 A buttons, and 2 B buttons. While we do not think that all these are needed, we understand that the options were included so that the controller was comfortable for all ages. It will be interesting to see if there is any further refinement of the final button layout. You can download a couple videos of me using the controller at the end of the article.
Just because a car trip is over doesn't mean you have to put down the controller. The unit can detach from your car, which allows you to take it with you. The unit is constantly charging off the power of the car, so once detached you will have the ability to play anywhere. Now you can enjoy GBA games on the 10 inch screen anywhere you go. The unit also automatically detects the screen orientation so that the image displays correctly when it is either in your car, or in your hands. I think that the idea of carrying around what basically is a giant GBA SP with you is a something of a dream for a Nintendo fan. It’s definitely one way to show your Nintendo support!
We had some time to speak with Jonathan Weisberg, the Director of Mobile Electronics for Visteon to get more in depth with the unit itself. Mr. Weisberg informed us that he has plans to incorporate a system that would allow a player to change GBA games without having to power down the unit. The unit would instantly know when a GBA cart has been taken out, and it would revert back to the main menu. Once a new game was inserted, the unit would take a few seconds to register the game, and then it would start right up. He also explained that the final product would display a GBA game with an undistorted image. The image will not be stretched to fill the 16:9, the image will be contain small black bars on the left and right hand side to preserve image quality. Lastly Mr. Weisberg said to expect a future announcement concerning price, and an official launch date.
All in all, the GoNintendo staff left the Visteon/Nintendo event with a very positive outlook on the unit. The product definitely has a great market for any families left with the problem of entertaining passengers on a long car trip. While a few things could be fine tuned such as controller button layout, the unit had an extremely impressive showing…especially for the amount of time that has gone into it. We attended the event not knowing what to expect, and left with a great respect for the Visteon/Nintendo partnership. If Nintendo can find another way for us to enjoy our GBA games as the years pass on, we are all for it. GoNintendo would like to thank both Visteon and Nintendo for taking the time to talk to us. We left the event having made very meaningful connections.