As we speculated a few weeks back, and despite claims to the contrary made this week by David Yarnton, boss of Nintendo UK, and reports from Nintendo Europe last week, it seems Nintendo have got a redesigned DS in the works after all, and it’s called the DS Lite.

As we suspected, the redesign is basically a shrinking down of the current DS, with a few alterations such as the microphone moving between the two screens, and the power button having disappeared from the front face of the console, presumably relocated to the side. A backlight brightness button is the only new addition, allowing the light to be set to 4 different levels. Also, as we predicted, the machine looks as if it might be a bit sturdier feeling this time round. No news on whether the GBA cartridge port remains, but let’s assume no news is good news and that it remains.

The dimensions of the DS Lite are 133mm x 84.7mm x 28.9mm, making it around 40% smaller than the current DS. It is also 20% lighter at 215g. It is due to go on sale in Japan on March 2nd, at the slightly higher price of 16,800 Yen ($145 US), though this will surely not be a problem in Japan since finding the original DS there is almost impossible at present.

The new design was unveiled quietly last night on Nintendo’s Japanese website, with just a single image being made available. Obviously the head division of the company wanted to keep this a big secret, since when pressed for information both Nintendo UK and Nintendo Europe have denied existence of any imminent redesign.

You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Add to Del.icio.us