http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/02/...-announces-dsi/

Japan on November 1 for about £100, Europe in late 2014 for £649.

The feeble 0.3 megapixel camera is a waste of time - even the crappiest budget phone can manage at least 1.3 these days. The addition of an SD card slot for media is excellent, though, along with the apparently enhanced sound (which hopefully also means a bit louder). And ever since the advent of the Lite the GBA slot was just a pain anyway, given the ugly way the carts stuck out. Assuming that flashcarts still work or can be quickly made to do so with firmware updates, and assuming someone hacks it or comes up with an emulator to play GBA ROMs off the SD card, that's a sale.

HOW much?

Oh.

Most excitingly, btw, the showreel footage on EG shows Solid Body Picross! And a new Wario Ware!

More worryingly, this page shows a serious drop in battery life:

http://uk.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_m...pic_id=26616527

(As well as some frankly hilarious claims about the battery life of the existing Lite. 10-15 hours at low brightness? Yeah, right.)

That's assuming the GBA hardware hasn't been wrenched out, which is the current thinking. (And from an emulation standpoint, GBA is not going to happen on DS.) My thoughts here, FWIW.

I took my DS on holiday to Bali recently and I'm sure I got at least 10 hours use out of a full charge on the lowest brightness setting with an R4DS.

I also took the DS charger but I didn't need it in the end, plus I was too scared to use it in case it blew up or something. Does anyone know if it's ok to use the DS charger in Indonesia with a converter? There was actually a 3-pin plug socket in the hotel room so I could have used that maybe, I dunno.

I'd be more interested if they made it smaller........

It's thinner, apparently. However, smaller would be nightmarish for holding. Thing GBA SP cramping.

Well, indeed. I'm kinda assuming that on general principle Nintendo would have made it able to play GBA stuff so that they could sell overpriced downloadable GBA games - that's very much the modern way of thinking. If not, then a DS with no way of playing GBA games and half the battery life isn't a very attractive proposition after all.

why wouldn't it, indonesia has 220v?

And I do worry about that in-game, the DS camera will be the new DS microphone.

I kinda thought the camera would be pointing the wrong way for in game use

out of interest, how many pixels in the eye-toy camera?

I always thought that was becasue or the buttons and the joypad being too close toghether.... I don't get the hand cramp with the micro......

That's why there are two cameras, one facing out and one facing in. As far as I can tell they're both 0.3 megapixels.

gah...

stupid daniel

(and I ment the eye-toy camera on the PS2)

Judging by this, the Eye Toy's resolution was lower than the DSi:

http://ps2.gamezone.com/gamesell/p27942.htm

Although this says it's 640x480, ie 0.3 megapixels, the same as the DSi:

http://www.answers.com/topic/eyetoy

Possibly good news for DS homebrew developers though.

Hmmm. Gamespot suggests two different camera resolutions. http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6198455.html

Should become clearer in the next few days.

I'm not entirely convinced that this product needs to exist.

All that's really happened is that Nintendo are admitting they are shit-scared of the iPhone.

That's a sort of standard setup for fancy 3G phones - crappy camera facing the user to support "video phoning", decent facing away for your standard photo taking.

But I doubt there is a 3MP camera on it - the DS' CPU just doesn't have the grunt to handle that, so they'd have to chuck in a load of specialised hardware to handle it.

The R4 is almost certainly going to be blocked on this - although i don't know how the R4 works around whatever checks are in there, so maybe they can't fix it. But the SD card slot does open the possibility that it will be possible to softmod it... maybe.

Absolutely everywhere else is saying both cameras are 0.3 megapixels.

Given the amount of misreporting ("Two touch screens!") around this, like I said, it looks like it'll take a few days for clarification to get around.

And another two years for the incorrect rumours to die off on the Internet.

Edit: to Stu; I'm sure they're correct. I suspect Ninty will do something good enough for games that might use it and not worry about convergence.

Wario Ware: Gurned!, here we come.

Immediate reaction: "You fucking cunts. I only just got a fucking Lite."

Later reaction: "Actually, maybe not so fussed. Bigger screen: nice. Camera: shit. And I never take my DS out, so it's music player function isn't that useful. Similarly, webbrowser: who cares."

I assumed the battery life would be better on the new model. Silly me, it seems.

No must-have features for me. I'll stick with my normal DS Lite.

didn't we say that when the lite was announced?

Did the Lite have half the battery life of the Chunky?

Heck no. Properly backlit display, more accurate touch-screen and better power-switch design. Three very big improvements.

Plus, overall aesthetic improvement.

I would never have bought a chunky.

God, no. The Lite was better than the original in every conceivable respect.

This one is actually worse than the Lite in many respects; it doesn't play GBA games, the battery life is worse, it costs more, it's wider and taller.

If you're a serious gamer (which we all are here), there's nothing new that makes this worth spending money on. It really is just a half-arsed, me-too answer to the iPod touch.

Huh? It seems to be slightly smaller, and I'm sure the DS didn't cost less than £100 in Japan at launch.

I never claimed that it did. The DS lite currently costs 16,800 yen whereas the DSi launches at 18,900.

Also:

What is the obsession with putting bloody cameras onto everything?

"What's in your pocket?"

"Err....my DS for playing games, oh, and it's got a built in camera. My mobile phone for making calls.....with a built in camera and........my digital camera.....for taking photographs."

"Why have you got three cameras about your person?"

"I DON'T KNOW!!!"

If they're clever - and you can use the camera on the back for motion sensing (possible on some mobile phones, etc) - then I won't complain in this case.

Wii-style channels?
Virtual console / DS Store?
Miis on DS?

well, i did anyway, but happy wasto be switching.

this i won't probably, because of the GBA thing, although, i saw an SP was only 16 pounds in gamestation lately, and a proper sp is ofcourse better than gba on a ds lite..

we'll see what the camera will do, as i have an iphone now, webbrowsing has become irrelevant for me, and the shop might be great if done properly..


and stu, we don't know excactly that battery life will be worse, do we? it's not like nintendo announced that

Still no analogue controller, shame. Driving games just aren't the same without analogue controls.

I've only recently got my DS Lite too, but I'm happy with it. It was cheap, has better battery life and is effectively armed with an SD, well microDS slot if you've got an R4.

The spec comparison Stu linked to is the same as one on nintendo.co.jp, so it's as official as you'll get.

Technical considerations aside, what do people think of the look of the DSi?

To me it looks cleaner, but also rather plain and boring. It lacks style.

I don't like the matte finish either and far prefer the glossy shell of the DSL.

From what I've seen and know of the Wii versions of those, they all fit into the big "don't care"/"shit" bucket.

I mean, I don't want a new DS, so I'm just happy it doesn't look like a must-have update. Or a want-at-all one. And mm, it does look like they've lost some of the Lite's sexiness.

Looks like the DSi is likely to be region-locked.
Even if I was previously interested in upgrading my Lite to one of these (I wasn't) then this would certainly make me change my mind.

Also, regarding the music player, it won't play mp3's, only AAC format. That seems like a rather stupid decision....

http://ds.kombo.com/article.php?artid=6601