Turns out the rumors were right, and Nintendo is launching a brand-new DS handheld in the form of the DSi.

I sense a lot of hate around here, mostly for the exclusion of the GBA port on the bottom of the DS model. I'm not surprised more of you aren't upset your R4s will no longer be working with the DSi - trust me, Nintendo has known about that for quite some time and they will ultimately have some solution to rendering the R4 inoperable on the DSi for some time.

But I'm going to try and look at things from the other side of the coin here. BlindsideDork already gave us reasons he wasn't looking forward to the DSi, so I'll be giving you the reasons I am looking forward to it:

The DSi camera opens up another way to play handheld games. Camera phones in Japan have been able to do this for years now, so it's only natural that the DSi would incorporate a camera. Yes, the resolutions won't be the best, but we're not talking camera phone here - we're talking a built-in peripheral for developers to use. Something like Boktai DS is now entirely that much more possible, with the camera being used as a light-sensing device. Or imagine a game that could use the camera to detect motion and movement. There are some ideas to be explored here.

A WiiWare/XBLA/PSN service for the DSi. They had to do this once the PSP was opened up to the PSN. But it's something I welcome. Now, a lot of those people who made freeware homebrew titles for gamers can offer them on the DS and make a profit off of them if they want to. It also lets some of the industry's big guns produce digital downloads for the DS, much like they have been able to do on other consoles. Maybe we'd even get a few ports of games already available - can you imagine Ikaruga on the DS? It might just be that much more possible now.

Music functionality is minimal, but could be useful. Yes, there are some brand-new announcement in regards to the on-board music playback technology, but it could be useful, especially if you're studying a foreign language. Like Japanese, for example. Being about to slow down the speech and actually hear each individual syllable pronounced is incredibly helpful, and I certainly could have used it for my Japanese homework assignments in college. I'm sure there will be other uses for it, but it's a nice little feature.

The DS Lite will still be around. Nowhere in their press conference did Nintendo say the DS Lite was going to be replaced by the DSi. Or if they did, I never caught it. I expect both will be commercially available to the consumer for quite some time, and there will always be the DS Lite back market for those of you who need to have that GBA port.

In closing, the DSi will serve a purpose for some, but not for all. I'm on the fence, leaning towards yes when it comes to picking one up as a replacement for my aging DS original, but I'm not yet sold on it. I'll wait and see how they use the new hardware to make handheld gaming more interesting first.




Also, we're getting Club Nintendo, finally. Why the hell is no one making a big deal about THAT?