New Nintendo DS in Japan this year?

Built-in Camera, portable music capability, and more, says Nikkei

Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei for short) has recently posted an article talking about a possible successor to the Nintendo DS. A cleaned-up machine translation of the article follows; Given the nature of the Japanese language, we urge you to keep in mind that this is not a direct translation:

Nintendo Co. will release a new model of the portable game machine “Nintendo DS” later this year. The electronics device breaks new ground by featuring, for the first time, a built-in camera and music playback. Wireless communication is stronger and available as soon as you power the system on. The original Nintendo DS, on sale for over four years, has reached sales of 77,000,000 world-wide. The new model of the device will exceed standard gaming functionality, bringing it closer to the features seen in mobile phones.

The features of the unit are also expanded, for example, photos taken with the built-in camera can be utilized within games. Regarding music playback, songs can be ripped from CDs.

The article is unclear whether or not this is simply a new version of the existing Nintendo DS, or if it is a new Nintendo DS altogether. Nintendo’s Gameboy Advance launched in 2001 and was replaced by the Nintendo DS by 2004. Given the Nintendo DS’s four-year reign, it’s possible this could be the next Nintendo DS rather than simply an update to the existing model.

Nikkei is one of the largest media corporations in Japan, and specializes in business news from all over the world. However, given the nature of this story (machine translation and all), I feel that, until there are more solid details personally from Nintendo on the matter, it is best to treat this as a “Rumor”.

Stay tuned to TSSZ News for the latest updates on this possible new Nintendo DS hardware revision.

Update: Wired is also running the story now, with a few tidbits of new information from the print version of Nikkei: the suggested price of this new unit would be about 20,000 Yen ($188). The current DS Lite costs about 16,800 yen ($158). Nikkei says it will launch in Japan immediately, but a North American release is still being considered. In addition, an earlier version of this Nikkei report seen on another website called Monex (now taken down) mentioned this new DS would not only have a larger screen, but would be able to transfer data with the Wii or through a standard SD Card. “Note that we may not be getting the full picture of the device’s capabilities from these reports; note also that the current version of the story does not confirm the two data points in the above paragraph.”, says Wired’s Chris Kohler.