Nintendo DSi: The Handheld giant is confused..

A few months ago Nintendo released in Japan a new version of the extremely successful Nintendo DS, the Nintendo DSi. It is basically the good old Nintendo DS slightly thinner, with bigger screen, two cameras and an SD card Slot. Nintendo is going to be releasing DSi in the rest the world early next month (April 6th). What's the big deal you ask? For the first time in history Nintendo looks like as if the company doesn't have a clear goal with its "new" product.

Look! Look! Its the DS....with camera....ooooo...

The company urged developers to start creating small pay or free apps for the new DSi app store. It looks to me that Nintendo is trying to pull an iPhone/iPod app store out of the deal. Nintendo is denying that its goal is to compete with the iPhone app store or that it wants its "new" gadget to compete with these devices. I think the Japanese developer is too proud to admit that they are trying to do something that another company is doing already.

I am a DS user for years. I went to the new DSi website to look at the new features and see what the device has to offer to me, the old user... I have to say that at this point it offers nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. The main slide show introduction is wasted on showing us that the device can shoot photos (with its shitty 0.3 MP camera) and then you can manipulate them to look silly. So what? Should I buy exactly the same device for something that is totally useless that I can do with my mobile phone already?

"So i can really can make me look like this.. ?"

It looks like that at some point Nintendo saw everything having a camera on and said..."ok, you...engineers go to your basement and make me a DS with camera...and make that two since we have two screens already...two shity cameras will suffice". At another point they said.."everybody else has storage capabilities...add me one of those as well". And finally at another point Miyamoto bought his first iPhone and started downloading little apps to it. He run straight to the Nintendo CEO at said. "Boss, Boss, look at this, we can make shitloads of money if we create yet another app store but this time for the DS. All the Japanese teenagers will go ape for this."

New Nintendo DS colours in bundle deals

Nintendo announced two new colors for its handheld console, Nintentdo DS. The new colors include a red edition bundled with the Super Mario Bros game and a new Blue edition bundled with the Brain Age.

Nintendo, as always, is playing her Christmas Card for announcements, new bundles and offers to get more consumers drooling over old-revamped products. Last year's bundles included the Zelda Phantom hourglass game and Nintendogs who in their right mind would buy a new DS just for the color? It is not like they have added extra capabilities. All I know though, is that Nintendo knows better since DS has sold more than 80 million units world wide and that is no small feat. I guess there are always new consumers out there who still haven't got the DS console which, as Nintendo Wii, revolutionized console gaming.

Nintendo sees (yet again) shortages of Wii console this Christmas

In what can only be described as 3rd time dejavu, Nintendo announced that they might not be able to keep up with the market demand for Wii this Christmas. The same thing happened last Christmas and the year before that. Taking into consideration that we are at the end of October, Nintendo probably wants to start the holiday season early this year. I mean, come on, you pulled that 2 years in a row and you will probably pull that a third time now. This will be yet another (successful) attempt to increase the hype about the console.

Wii is an excellent innovative console that has sold more units that PS3 and XBOX360 combined. Yes, the market demand is high, but Nintendo is gaining more on building momentum than misses on sales due to lack of units on the shelves. It shows to potential buyers that the console is so damn good that they barely can get one for themselves. Nintendo announced that have increased by 33% their console production so the problem will not be as big as last year. At the moment all good online retailers have no problem moving the boxes and I seriously doubt they will during the Christmas period, so, do not rush into it, if you were planning to buy the console in a month.