Nintendo’s New DS Features Cameras, Media Playback, SD Slot

Author: Rees | Date: October 2, 2008

Nintendo DSi Features Web Access, Camera, SD Slot And Downloadable Games.

Nintendo announced their latest iteration of the world’s best-selling handheld today – the DS Lite’s slightly interesting big brother, the DSi. It has two 300K pixel cameras (thanks for splashing out there, Nintendo), an SD card sot for media playback, and screens which are bigger than those of the classic DS / DS Lite.

Looking at the press images, it also seems that they’ve relocated the power button and tweaked a few other little aesthetic things. In an interesting twist, however, they’ve gone and removed the Gameboy Advance slot, meaning that maybe it’s time to chuck all of those old GBA games up on ebay.

Nintendo DSi Camera

Perhaps Nintendo’s plan is to sell them all to us all over again, as a Wii-like download service will be launching, allowing DS owners to download full games onto their SD cards using Nintendo Points. The handheld will also feature a web browser based on the excelent mobile version of Opera, as with existing Nintendo systems. It’s probably safe to assume, then, that the DSi will also have more memory than the DS Lite, as the original Opera DS was included with a seperate expansion which fit into the now-absent GBA slot.

Strange that they didn’t bother to upgrade the other internals of the DS as well and just release the thing as a whole new handheld, but I guess the Big N know a good source of income when they see one. I can imagine that a lot of existing DS owners, as well as people new to the format, will be queueing up at the shops to get their hands on it when it releases in Japan on November 1st for 18,900 Yen (about $185/£100) , if only to get access to that new download service.

The Nintendo DSi SD Card Slot For Media And Camera Pictures

It’ll release in the rest of the world some time in 2009, but as the DS is completely region free there really is no reason not to hop on over to Play-Asia on the 1st and see if you get lucky.

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