April 12th 2008 - Thanks to an article published in Bloomberg: Japan, a wave of speculation has flooded the gaming industry as Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Japanese magazine publisher Enterbrain (which is home to popular gaming publication Famitsu) has recently commented that Nintendo may be announcing a new version of its insanely popular handheld, the Nintendo DS at this year's E3 convention.

At this stage it is unclear as to whether the rumoured DS will be another redesign or an entirely new platform. Given Nintendo's past history, it would be assumed that it is another upgrade in the works rather than a new machine at this time as Nintendo would be wary of jeopardising their sales as the DS continues to sell like hotcakes across the globe.


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I was reasonably happy jumping from the phat to the lite, and chances are I'd make the jump again.

Personally I'm hoping they make it even more compact.
I just spent minutes coming up with a brand new design using the latest 3D modelling software available on my PC (ie MSPaint)

That's an interesting design concept Stevo but how would the Dpad+buttons foldup? Would they slide or do you fold them? If you folded them you'd have the layout scheme on the outside of the DS

Personally I'd like to see better quality speakers, the ability to adjust the backlit lighting whilst playing games (instead of turning it off, then going through the menu) and the ability to have a save file cache system like the PSP so you can turn it off completely and still be able to play where you were up to. A better battery life would also be good (even with the long life it has already, it'd be nice to charge it even less). Can't think of anything else, the DS Lite is already as awesome as it is. Scratch resistant screen? Better LCD detail?

If it was just more compact, I doubt I'd buy it again. I mean, it's already freaking stylish! The DS Phat was an ugly beast that actually needed an upgrade to be more popular

The dpad and buttons bits slide underneath

I'd love it if they built in some media player functionality but I think I'm dreaming

It will be interesting to see what they come up with, if it's indeed going to happen.

I honestly don't know how Nintendo could improve the DS Lite. It's one of my favourite pieces of tech ever. It's so nice looking and everything about it seems so refined... As slashy said, a button to control the backlight setting while you're in a game would be nice, but other than that I love everything about the Lite.

Having said that, we are talking about Nintendo, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see a DS Micro sometime in the future :P

I would imagine that the only reason would be to include memory so that you can play WiiWare titles on the DS and save them. I can't see the point in another redesign before they upgrade to the next in the DS line.

I've held off from buying a DS Lite in case of a new model... I just hope that this new model, if it turns out to be true, is just as good if not better than the Lite. I can't really think of much they would do in a redesign, apart from maybe remove the GBA slot.

Looking forward to E3 in any case.

Correct me if I'm wrong but haven't Nintendo flat-out denied this now?

I think even Enterbrain backed down from the comment too...