New Nintendo DS Details And Rumors

The rumor mill has been working overtime since the announcement yesterday of the new Nintendo DS portable console. An interview by GameInformer with Nintendo of America’s Director of Public Relations, Beth Llewelyn has yielded a number of tantalising facts. For one she has confirmed that the comment in yesterday’s press release concerning “memory of up to 1 Gigabit” does indeed refer to the console’s media storage system, which will not be based on any kind of optical disc. Llewelyn also confirmed that the two screens would be set out in a vertical configuration and that developers were free to combine the images on both and use them as a single giant display. Finally, she also confirmed that the company is still working on the successor to the Game Boy Advance and the GameCube. Meanwhile website 1up claims to have obtained an officially published technical specification of the new console, which will apparently have a separate processor for each of the two screens. The British made ARM9 will be the main CPU and the ARM7 (the main CPU used in the Game Boy Advance) the subprocessor. The technical specifications also apparently indicates that both screens will be backlit, in the manner of the Japanese-only Game Boy Light. This is generally regarded as a superior system to the Game Boy Advance SP’s side lighting set-up. Finally, analysts quoted by news agency Bloomberg are predicting that the console will likely retail for well under $200, which would justify comments from Nintendo officials that the Nintendo DS will not be competing directly with Sony’s $350+ PlayStation Portable (PSP). Sources: GameInformer, 1up and gamesindustry.biz