The reasons they have used to present their case is The DS has reached its Saturation point in Japan, the console itself is getting on a bit, the development in DS games has gone very quiet, all Nintendo consoles have had 3 versions, a spec increase wouldn't hurt, Nintendo loves to combat Piracy and finally downloadable GBA games.

General consensus around the industry recently has tipped the imminent arrival of a new DS, whether it's a new model of the existing machine in a GBA SP sort of way, or an entirely new 'DS 2'.

We contacted Nintendo for a comment and they gave us more than the usual 'rumour and speculation' answer. Which was...

"No announcement has been made by Nintendo and everything reported online is pure speculation and rumour. Our hardware development team always work on the next product after we launch one hardware. It is usual that a new model will be brought to the market when we can not offer new ideas with the current model, but we think Nintendo DS is not 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 the official line is that DS is 'not at that stage yet', huh? Well, we beg to differ. In fact, we can think of seven good reasons DS could not only do with an upgrade or sequel, but in fact why there must be one already being prepped by Nintendo boffins.

theundertakergonzo via gamesradar.com »