You may have heard about the lack of Nintendo DS consoles in Japan after the new year, with stores selling out and no new stock being available. Shortages of consoles are nothing new, with PSP and XBox 360 most recently, and the lack of stock of PS2 and XBox at Christmas 2004 (in the UK if nowhere else!) being good examples, but the news of shortages in DS in Japan has fuelled rumours of the console getting a bit of a redesign, so Nintendo have purposely let stocks run dry.

This isn’t as mad as it may sound, with Nintendo’s previous hand-helds evolving over the years. For example, the original GameBoy Advance became the SP and has just been rereleased again in the new Micro form, so a redesign of the DS is probably likely at some point anyway.

So what will the new machine look like. There have been no information from Nintendo on the subject at all, but my guess is that the new machine will keep the clam shell design, will be smaller and will have a more solid feel to it than the current DS which whilst strong always feels to me as if it is mostly hollow. It’s possible that the joypad and buttons might move under the screen to produce a more SP like layout as well, although this may end up being a little too tall vertically. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the GBA cartridge slot goes missing as well, now that GBA Micro has been released and I suspect a majority of people have rarely (if ever) played a GBA game on their DS anyway.

A number of industry insiders have speculated that an official announcement from Nintendo may be made next week. We’ll bring you more news as and when we have it!

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