This morning Nintendo announced the redesign of the Nintendo DS. Much like the Gameboy Advanced SP, “DS Lite” is set to arrive in Japan on March 2nd. No word yet on an American release. Changes to the sytem include reducing dimensions from:
-148.7mm wide to 133mm wide
-84.7mm high to 73.9mm high
-28.9mm deep to 21.5mm deep
The weight has also been reduced from 275g to 215g.
A few functionality changes have been made. You can now switch the backlight to 4 different levels of brightness. The position of the power button and microphone have been changed. And finally the D-pad and buttons appear to have changed in appearance. In face the overall look of the new DS resembles the Revolution very well.
I don’t understand why Nintendo would release a redesigned system so soon, especially since it has seen very good sales recently. I mean they are kinda screwing those who just got one over the holidays. It doesn’t really matter though considering the only thing that really changed is the size and weight… like it was too heavy for you to carry or something.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
January 28th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Well, as they did the SP during March 2003, the release is just to (as the picture shows) resemblence the Revolution controller (okay, that was speculation) and also make the system (which has had complains to feel abit heavy while holding long periods of time) lighter and smaller, thus that compact feel of what can be similar to the Game Boy Micro.
Also, I remember reading about there being new Voice Communication and IP Telephony included aside from the new Brightness setting…