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Nintendo working on new handheld

By Adam Mathew, 27/8/2008 4:14:25

Will nintendo announce a third-gen DS at the Tokyo Game Show? It has been widely rumoured that the gaming geniuses will be unveiling a super-duper, slimmed down version of everyone’s favourite handheld. And yet Nintendo has gone on record to poo-poo the very idea of this happening, labelling it “rumour and speculation”.

All rather frustrating, we’re sure you’ll agree.

For, although the Nintendo DS is a near-perfect little machine and one which gives us all immense joy, there is always room for improvement. Of course, we love a new hardware launch too! So when we caught wind of a – somewhat poorly – translated interview from a report on bloomberg’s Japanese website that seemed to indicate a new DS announcement was imminent, it was hard to contain our excitement.

The comments came from Hirokazu Hamamura, the President of Famitsu magazine publisher, Enterbrain. He forecast that Nintendo wouldn’t leave it much longer and that there is usually an average of two years between handheld releases. Enterbrain has since gone on record to say that “no such statement or announcement was made by the president” and that he was merely speculating on the future of the DS and looking forward to E3, Leipzig and TGS.

But, we can reveal, Nintendo is working on a new handheld and has been doing so since the DS Lite was launched. Rob Saunders, Nintendo’s PR man, told us: “our hardware development team is always at work on the next product after we launch one piece of hardware. It is usual that a new model will be brought to the market when we cannot offer new ideas with the current model.”

Quite what the Nintendo team is coming up with is not known but Rob says that, in any case, the firm is not ready to reveal it. He added: “we don’t think the Nintendo DS is at that stage yet, and we’d like to keep offering all sorts of suggestions to enrich the lives of people who own a Nintendo DS.”

So when will the big announcement come? Jay Defibaugh from industry analysts Credit Suisse Securities says Nintendo will need to announce what it intends for the future “before the next 18 months, when we start obsessing about what the next-generation machines will look like.”

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