Nintendo has come out of the closet! They’ve unveiled the new Nintendo DS, the DSi. Whats different? 0.25” larger screen, a VGA camera, SD card slot and no longer GBA playback.

What does this mean? That Nintendo doesn’t seem to have any rational thought behind it’s strategy. Alright, the DSi uses only oldish components which should make it cheap. But the DS lite isn’t getting any cheaper so DSi probably wont either.

What are we gonna do with a VGA camera? Probably take crappy pictures. We certainly won’t interact with it as we do with Playstation eye, the DSi just doesn’t have the computational power.

What are we gonna do with the SD card slot? Download games from the Wii. Except Nintendo still isn’t releasing that many games, and third parties are sure to be excluded as ever before.

What are we gonna do without GBA playback? The same thing we do now, ignore it.

What are we gonna do with a slightly larger screen? Well, the difference is kinda marginal so probably nothing at all. Se more of our dreaded pixelation probably.

Oh, and the entire unit is slightly larger then the DS lite. Hurray… Couldn’t they at least make it a bit more sleek?

In conclusion, the DSi is a really weird new SKU of the DS lite… Which could have been dramatically improved just by making it thinner. Strategic design of the DSi seems to have been cut so that Nintendo can squeeze a few extra bucks out of the DS.

Shame Kyoto, this is the old school Nintendo doing it all over again. (i.e. you arrogant pricks!)