Nintendo DS News // Iwata: No new Nintendo DS. No DS Phone

In a recently interview, Nintendo's Satoru Iwata made a clear statement about the rumors of a New Nintendo DS and a Nintendo DS Phone.

Iwata : "DS is a single-architecture platform with this huge installedbase that can be used by virtually anyone. This can be not comparedwith any other machine in the past, so it would be a shame if we couldnot use it as an infrastructure for something else. However, to do someans that Nintendo has to invent a new business model, which isdifferent from the way Nintendo was selling ROM cartridges and askingour software makers to make software, and from how we were producingthem and software publishers were selling them. So, we need some timebefore we move to that kind or development. We will definitely need toprepare for connection points and all that.

So, I cannot dwellon the details today, but many people have already suggested suchideas, and if you can just imagine that something interesting mighthappen whenever you bring your DS to a train station or theme park ormuseum, you know that there are enormous possibilities here. We arehopeful that we will be able to show you some concrete examples nextyear."

In a later quote, Iwata clarifies the position regarding a new DS next year.

"WhenI referred to the next year's developments for DS, I was not talkingabout any new hardware launch, of course. As I just emphasized theimportance of the great installed base of DS and the advantage thatnothing in the past had this installed base with a single architecture,we could not leverage that if we introduced new hardware.

So,what we were hinting about must be new services that we can offer withthe existing hardware. With that as the premise, we would like toestablish a circumstance where people can find new joy in carryingaround DS all the time. Such services should contribute to making DS anactively used hardware and, also, to make the leap from one DS perhousehold to one DS per individual."

DS As A Phone
Iwata,"So, I cannot imagine that, in the future, a single portable devicewill be able to provide every need for all the daily issues peoplehave, and I do not share a vision that DS has to be merged with cellphones in the future. Of course, we do not know how cell-phonetechnologies will evolve and what kind of business structure willemerge in the future. I cannot say with 100% assurance that Nintendo'sfuture will never intersect with that of the phone business. But as faras the structure of today's phone business is concerned, Nintendo doesnot have much interest."