Nintendo has revealed a pair of new DSi variants for the US market, luring classic dual-screen gamers with some slick matte paint finishes. The new matte red and matte blue DSi models are functionally identical to their predecessors, but should stand out from the crowd when they go on sale through retailers from this week.
Nintendo has announced price cuts for the DSi and DSi XL, dropping one of the handhelds to under a Benjamin and hoping that it can spur sales of both to help return to profit this year. Effective May 20, Nintendo's recommended pricing for the DSi will be $99.99, while for the DSi XL it will be $129.99.
Shrug off that case of the Mondays you’ve had all day and check out what made news in the gadget world today. For starters, there are a couple new developments in mobile data plans in the US. On the Verizon side, the carrier may soon be launching family data plans, making it a bit more affordable to have multiple smartphones on the same account. T-Mobile is playing the restriction card, as it will start imposing data roaming limits on April 5.
This generation of Pokemon titles kicks off with a bang as Pokemon Black and Pokemon White land in North America, Europe, and Australia in March. To coincide with the popular titles, Nintendo is bringing out two special limited edition DSi bundles for fans on March 6th.
Nintendo has reportedly ceased production of its DSi gaming handheld, with reports from Japanese retailers that the only way to pick up the dual-display device is to find a store with remaining stock. Unconfirmed by Nintendo, the rumors claim that some areas are already sold out of the best-selling console.
If you have a game console in your home you know what a mess things can become with all the controllers, accessories, and games laying around. If you have kids that play games on a console, you know that the mess can get huge really fast. LevelUp has announced a couple new storage products for Nintendo gamers that will help keep things tidy.
Nintendo has announced price cuts for the DSi and DSi XL, with the two portable consoles set to shed $20 apiece. As of September 12th, the Nintendo DSi will be priced at $149.99, while the Nintendo DSi XL will be $169.99; the DS Lit will stay at $129.99 as before.
We're scratching our heads at this one. It's only been a week since Nintendo announced that there would be new colors coming to the DSi XL line-up, and while that was all well and good, there wasn't any announcement saying that the new shades would be seeing release anywhere else other than Japan. And then Nintendo sneaks this one in: Midnight Blue is coming to the States.
Nintendo have slashed prices on their DS-range of gaming handhelds, together with outing a few new colors for the DSi LL. In Japan, the DS Lite will be cut from 16,800 yen ($183) to "open pricing" (where retailers are free to set their own figures) while the DSi will fall from 18,900 yen ($206) to 15,000 yen ($164). Meanwhile the DSi LL will fall from 20,000 yen ($218) to 18,000 yen ($197).
Nintendo have announced their latest quarterly financial results [PDF link], and it proved a disappointing period for both Wii and DSi sales. Wii demand plummeted, falling 21-percent from the same period a year ago, while DSi sales dropped 13-percent. The company has blamed poor flagship Wii game title releases for middling demand for the console, and are looking to the new 3D-capable Nintendo 3DS to salve further handheld shortfalls.
Nintendo are blaming rampant piracy for a 45-percent drop in European DS game sales, pointing to so-called "magicom" or "R4" cartridges - which bypass copy protection and allow downloaded game ROMs to be played on the handheld - as the primary cause. The hacks have previously been a significant issue in Japan, but have more recently spread to Europe; Italy, Spain and France are particular hotspots, apparently.
When is a games console not a games console? When it's an iPhone or iPod touch, of course, and while Apple may only list gaming as a partial purpose of their devices, that hasn't stopped iPhone OS from picking up a growing chunk of the market. Software analysts Flurry have stepped up with some new figures that suggest Apple's iPhone OS has seen its US video game software market share increase five-fold between 2008 and 2009.
