Kevin H.

Huh? If a game was worth $30 in 2001, why is it worth less in 2006? How has it depreciated? Did it get less fun somehow over five years? Iwata has been pretty clear about this; if you drop the price of every single game you release six months after it comes out, what are customers going to do? Wait for the price drop! So your sales get delayed six months, you make LESS money in the long run, AND you piss off your customers who did pay more and got nothing for it. What kind of sense does that make?

"So goes the Monkey Ball franchise"? Screw you. I love me some Monkey Ball and the sales figures say there's a bunch of other people who do too. Why are you jockeying for position to play games that you hate? You're at E3. I'm sure you could find something you LIKED if you tried really, really hard.

"With Elebits, Konami looks to be targeting casual gamers. Indeed, the game is said to include some stages that can be completed in less than 10 minutes."

This is embarrassing and ridiculous. Any game that isn't ludicrously complicated or require five hands to play and a 30-hour-per-week committment is "targeting casual gamers," it seems. If that's the case, then ¡Viva la gamer casual! How many Lemmings levels can be beaten in 10 minutes or less, once you figure out the puzzle? How about that old canard Super Mario Bros? Does it take Joystiq writers half an hour to get through 1-1? Or was that, too, targeted to "casual gamers," a perfectly classical example of the "abandonment" commenter #1 was talking about? If the game is fun, and this one sounds interesting if nothing else, who gives a rat's ass how long the stages are?

Wake me up when they announce Adventure Island Revolution. Can't get that funky jungle beat out of my head!

This guy wants to make playgrounds instead of games, so who gives a crap what he thinks of the controller? Probably hasn't seen it in action, much less used it. *YAWN*

Frankly it's laughable for importers to expect to pay the same as a consumer in the country of origin. What did you expect? That the DS Lite was going to be as unpopular in Japan as the Xbox 360? Nintendo could hardly keep the DS in stock in Japan before releasing this sleek and improved design. Can't you put two and two together? I sure can. Wake me up when that baby hits North America for real.

Not only does this look incredible, but the version that we get in our hot little hands will show a YEAR'S worth of improvement. Wow!

My crystal ball prediction is for an August launch. If Nintendo's first big announcement of 2006 is a firm launch window--and starting production on a console isn't something that can be kept under wraps for too long--they'll have plenty of time to rev up the hype machine and put the finishing touches on a launch line-up. They'll beat PS3 to market no matter what happens at this point--picture the Xbox 360 launch, one year to the date. Contrariwise, seven or even eight months of production might give Nintendo a glut of stock, but a launch price circa $150 will make it very attractive. Reggie promised steady information starting in 2006; expect to see actual hands-on gameplay demos at E3, but only a couple of titles. Nintendo is still wary of revealing too many game ideas to thirsty rivals.