Nintendo: DSi won't immediately replace DS Lite in U.S.

While there's been a fair amount of excitement and buzz over the recently announced, camera-equipped upgrade to Nintendo's best-selling handheld, it seems that the big N doesn't want American gamers to neglect the DSi's older, lensless sibling. In a recent interview with Game|Life, Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo's VP of sales and marketing (and world-renowned snowboarding expert), explained that the DS Lite has "huge, untapped potential" in the U.S. -- potential that the company hopes to tap before replacing the Lite with the new shutterbugish model.

Dunaway explained Nintendo's hopes to bring America's DS Lite sales to a level the company has come accustomed to in Japan, where one in every two households owns the handheld. While the DSi isn't due out in America until "well into 2009", Nintendo hopes to bolster Lite sales by allowing the two versions to "coexist for some period of time". Hey, as long as the DS Lite doesn't go all Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son, we're cool with it.

Reader Comments (62)

"Do you actually still play those shitty old graphical and gameplay inept titles or do you just want some to moan about?"

You're either fourteen or just plain stupid.

Smooth sprites often look a lot better than aliased 3d, so I don't know why you're calling GBA games graphically inept.

I don't know how you could consider them devoid of gameplay either, obviously you haven't played Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission, Minish Cap, Golden Sun, the various Castlevania titles, Bomberman Tournament, the various Pokémon games, and quite a few more. Just because the system was a dumping ground for cheap movie games and Mn'M's platformers doesn't mean there aren't any good games for it.

No no, I've played all the decent games. Which is why I'm not bothered by the DSi's lack of a GBA slot.

But I'll give you that it'll cause problems for Pokemon and Guitar Hero...

It didn't have anything to do with pure greed. NOA just got stuck in the modern world of instant information. The DSi came out for Japan, but what can NOA do about it? If they don't talk to the press about it, then they become assholes. Instead, they came up with a lame story that the old version is still good enough--which we all know is a cop-out. They couldn't say "NOJ screwed us! They get new stuff, and now we have to answer for it, and we've got nothing to show the US public. We had to come up with some bullshit story about how great the DS Lite is (which leads to the irony: if DSL is so good, why the F are we making a new one?) until the DSi ships to America.

I can totally see reggie getting all mad when dropped with the news that the DSi wasn't coming out in America. He probably choked out miyamoto for a while.

The only problem is that the DSi is not really necessary. It's doing fine in Japan. It's not like the 360 is outselling it. There's no good reason to turn the DS into a camera/web browser.

I agree, there's no reason to split your market when it's doing fine. if anything this actually HURTS the market because people will eventually get confused when games start coming out that require DSi functionality. If they were going to do this at all they should have just called it the DS2 and upped the graphics so that it would be a brand new platform with DS backwards compatibility. Simply put, they screwed up and too many Nintendo addicts will put money into it because they'll snap up anything with the nintendo name and thus somehow justify this stupidity. Makes me glad that they can't stop people from pirating their games.

"So I think there's opportunity for both of them to coexist for some period of time."

This seems to go against the idea that the DSi is a "third pillar" system that wouldn't be replacing the DS Lite. But then again, if you define "third pillar" as what the original DS was to the GBA (DS eventually replaced GBA), then I guess this statement doesn't really go against the DSi-as-a-third-pillar idea after all. What remains to be seen is *if* the sales of the DSi will permit it to eventually replace the DS Lite...

Oh, and any word on region locking for DS Ware?

that's because the DSi won't be immediately released...

PRspeak, bleh.

No one will buy a DSi just after buying a DSlite on america.
And they wont be able to boost DSlite sales more than what the DSi would sell.

They just want to have enough supply and hype for it in Japan.

Well I am looking forward to it...too bad we won't get one till after April. :'(

Only the "little people" pay taxes and will keep DS Lites.

"But honestly, without a GBA slot, this is a definite pass." -- Dragod

Exactly. It's incomprehensible to me why there are so few of us infuriated by this huge reduction in the DS's capability as a game machine. I would have thought at least half of us would be yelling at Nintendo for taking away our GBA player completely, and replacing it with unnecessary peripheral crap. I don't see this as a replacement for the DS, much less an upgrade to the DS. It is a separate product, with a different intended buyer. I have absolutely no interest in it.

Drop the price for the DS to 60 bucks and I'll buy two.

Nintendo: DSi won't immediately replace DS Lite in U.S.

Reader Comments (62)

Posted: Oct 6th 2008 12:11AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 6th 2008 4:37AM Zorque said

Posted: Oct 6th 2008 3:02PM Kaminaaa said

Posted: Oct 5th 2008 5:34PM JRMG said

Posted: Oct 5th 2008 6:31PM PN04 said

Posted: Oct 5th 2008 6:33PM JoshMilewski said

Posted: Oct 5th 2008 7:21PM sinai said

Posted: Oct 5th 2008 11:44PM Gwr said

Posted: Oct 5th 2008 10:00PM motang said

Posted: Oct 6th 2008 2:14AM ecco6t9 said

Posted: Oct 6th 2008 2:36AM c0bra95 said

Posted: Oct 6th 2008 11:38AM urs74 said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW