Get ready for trade-in values to drop; a shocking weekend news post from Wired's Game|Life revealed that Nintendo may be in the mood for another renovation to their popular platform. Game|Life head honcho Chris Kohler breaks it down for all of us who are unfortunate enough to lack fluency in Japanese:
Nikkei Net, the online arm of Japan's foremost economic newspaper, reports that the new model will launch this year in Japan and include a camera and music playback. Nikkei's take on the new machine is that Nintendo is moving outside the boundaries of the "game industry" and attempting to create a device that will compete with more general electronics like cell phones.
Nikkei does point out that the camera function of DS could be integrated with gameplay, by allowing games to use the photos taken with the hardware.
There's no doubt that the DS' 2006 remodel was a much-needed change; it made the system smaller, brighter, and look remarkably less like a toy. I'm one of many who handed down their fat DS to a loved one or stranger for the benefit of a much sleeker handheld--and the DS Lite has been so awesome that I feel no resentment for Nintendo. The changes to this supposed new model aren't quite as drastic as what would be in the DS2 (or whatever Nintendo decides to call it), though they're pretty big nonetheless. But will Americans really fall for a third model of the same product?
From my viewpoint, it's pretty likely, and as much as I'd like to chastise Nintendo for not advancing the technology to a completely new handheld system, I don't want the DS to go away. There's no doubt that the DS' longevity is due to its phenomenal sales; the Game Boy Advance was only around (in America) for about 3.5 years before the DS launched, and we're nearly four years into the DS' lifespan at this point--and I don't see an end anytime soon. It is unlikely that with this hardware revision, we may finally see the end of GBA backwards compatibility (as rumors have indicated for a long time); but, as long as the Game Boy Player exists, I can still live in this world--especially if the new DS includes some kind of Mini-Virtual Console.
So, what does everyone else think about this: shameless money-grab, or an interesting redesign? If it's useful and cheap (as the article indicates), I'm leaning towards the latter.
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