Nintendo confirms DS MP3 Player

It looked pretty legit to begin with, but now Nintendo (Nintendo Europe, at least) has confirmed the cleverly-named "Nintendo MP3 Player" for a December 8th launch, coinciding nicely with the Wii launch that day. The SD card-based player is fairly well self-contained, mainly leeching off of the DS for controls and power -- it even has its own headphone port -- but that means it can also work with the less-powerful Game Boy Advance/Advance SP/Micro lineup, which is always a plus. Sound can at least be routed through the DS' headphones and speakers. No word on price, so we'll stick with that €30 figure, and apparently Nintendo isn't including any SD card in the box, but we're sure you'll be able to find one somewhere to match with the nifty player. Keep reading to spy pics of the incredibly odd interface Nintendo has cooked up for this thing.

[Via MobileWhack]

[inv @ Nov 22nd 2006 6:32PM]

this sucks. That you have to buy an addon to play mp3 on the ds. Thats so 2001.

[liam @ Mar 8th 2008 12:16AM]

is it a DS with a mp3 game cartrige???

[Chris @ Nov 22nd 2006 6:33PM]

The UI looks RETARDED. Plus, doesn't the DS have a headphone port--why would you want another one?

[Tengu @ Nov 22nd 2006 6:43PM]

Yep - repackaged (and not as nicely) Play Yan.

[caramelzappa @ Nov 22nd 2006 6:45PM]

It has it's own headphone port for use with the GBA SP, which doesn't have a headphone port.

[nrk @ May 26th 2007 1:02AM]

It doesn't work with the GBA/GBASP. These devices do not have the necessary ARM9 CPU.

[T.I.P. @ Nov 22nd 2006 6:50PM]

That looks pretty cool. But why can't Nintendo come out with like a firmware update on newer games so we can just have this feature on our DS without buying anything?

[Mr. Picklesworth @ Nov 22nd 2006 7:02PM]

Well, they let themselves get completely owned in that department by Moonshell, which is:
Free software
Probably cheaper to acquire (you need homebrew equipment, which can go as low as $25 for an adapter if you're lucky enough to be able to do WifiMe!)
-Compatible with all manner of storage devices (SD, CF, Transflash) and able to run from Slot1 or Slot2
-Built for the DS and only the DS (thus with a full-screen dual screen touch interface)
-Nice looking
-Nice sounding
-Able to play videos (MPeg 1 with a special audio track), display big pictures, display text files, and all manner of audio files including Wav, OGG and Mp3. This is exceptionally cool in my opinion because it runs on two synchronous processors; Arm7 does audio, Arm9 does video.
-Has basic plugin support.
-Is skinnable and has a cool screensaver thing
-Oh, did I mention that it runs on the hardware instead of as some

It's a shame, really. I was looking forward to an official DS Mp3 player because one would assume that the people who actually have access to all the resources on the DS would be able to come up with something faster and better, maybe able to play "regular" video formats without losing syncronization?

Sadly, they seem to have been completely beaten by a singly person who did it for fun /last year/.

Oh well, they still may surprise me with a nice design for that cart that manages to fit into the GBA slot.
I guess I can't expect it to fit a DS-Lite, though, which really brings to mind a vital question: How is this a DS MP3 player?
They've crafted it for the GBA SP!

[Richard Vialoux @ Nov 22nd 2006 7:15PM]

I love how Nintendo is letting us use SD memory! Awesome stuff.

Definitely going to pick one of these up.

[tekdroid @ Nov 22nd 2006 7:21PM]

Ogg Vorbis, Nintendo? And there's no licensing free for it...
http://www.vorbis.com
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/hardware.html

[Andrew Hutner @ Nov 22nd 2006 7:46PM]

wait...does this mean a possibility of homebrew on the NDS without a homebrew thingy that you need to pay crazy prices for?!!!

[memobug @ Nov 22nd 2006 8:48PM]

Is this different than the Max Media Dock by Datel? I think those have been out since July. I have one but I never got around to using it. I think it was around $50 with no media.

[Nicholas FitzRoy-Dale @ Nov 22nd 2006 9:39PM]

I don't get the comments suggesting that Nintendo should do this without extra hardware. How would you get the songs onto it? One way or another you're gonna need a cartridge!

[steve @ Nov 22nd 2006 10:09PM]

or you could always just buy an mp3 player
then you could play the ds and listen to music at the same time

[Dr Chaos @ Nov 25th 2006 3:43AM]

If nintendo made a standalone mp3 player, I'm pretty sure we'd have an ipod killer on our hand. But for now, considering i have a mp3 phone, 4 mp3 players and my streaming network, this is just overkill for me

[Karl @ Nov 23rd 2006 12:13AM]

So, they're just coming out with this now? And the image says copyright 2005. That's one heck of a long testing phase...

My guess is it takes FOREVER for anyone to get any kind of MP3 rights, It would be easier if everyone in the world had open-format OGG instead of MP3 (I don't use either format.

I anxiously await a media player of some sort for my Wii, though...

[JRM @ Nov 23rd 2006 12:57AM]

This is a Play-yan, albeit repackaged somewhat. I have one and it plays music + movies great. For the sake of the Europeans, I hope this version also plays mp4's. It would be pretty stupid if it only plays mp3's. by the way, the headphone jack on the machine is necessary because the GBA hardware (as it connects to slot #2 on the DS) can't play mp3s well. it sounds crackly.

[Geoffrey Sperl @ Nov 23rd 2006 4:22AM]

I, for one, think the interface is kinda cool. Mario jumping around while you choose tracks is a spiffy little idea.

Now, do I want one? I have a 60GB iPod and an iTunes-enabled SLVR, so I'm not sure what one of these would do for me (other than make me re-encode my AACs to MP3s, which is not something I want to do). But I still think it's a nice little add-on for a DS or a GBA.

[dink-butt @ Nov 23rd 2006 10:35PM]

no one cares about yr toys.

[unknwn @ Nov 23rd 2006 1:11PM]

It's the most retarded thing ive heard of.


and it's HELLA pricy, i dont know if theyre aware of this, but you can already buy a 2GB MP3 player for about that same price. and it looks ALOT better than a DS.

[yjs @ Nov 23rd 2006 6:15AM]

This is just the Play-yan with an English interface. I believe the original was released early 2005 in Japan.

[Mr.Blonde @ Nov 23rd 2006 6:57AM]

I got the 'official' GBA mp3 player last year, it looks better than this current serving. It takes CF instead of SD and it has a microphone and agood line-in recording option.

[buzlink @ Nov 25th 2006 9:49AM]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061123-8278.html

[Casbah @ Dec 20th 2006 4:05PM]

I've already got a Game Boy Micro, and since that is so small(small enough accidently swallow...) getting this for it would be great. i do have an mp3 player, but its a piece of crap, saying that another switch breaks off every time i drop the damn thing.
and if you get multiple SD cards for it you could just change that like you change a game cartrige, no worries :D

[marios @ Jan 19th 2007 10:23AM]

If i have the Nintendo MP3 player, a 2mb SD card and a video file on my PC; How can i watch it on my DS Lite?

[5318008 @ Oct 2nd 2007 2:14AM]

Delayed, much?

[Josh @ Feb 20th 2008 5:18AM]

i was thinking of buying one of these, but now i have looked at all of the reveiws i think it is crap. :P

but, is it worth buying?