There were so many ways that the DS could have evolved. Nintendo could’ve made the top screen touch-sensitive. The whole thing could have been compacted to fold up into a convenient Gameboy SP-sized package, like one of those shoop’ed ads circulating the interwebs from long, long ago. But no, they had to come up with the Nintendo DSi, which is basically a re-designed DS without the GBA port and dual 0.3 megapixel cameras. Well at least the screens themselves are bigger, and there’s some potential with homebrew ( the DSi also offers SD card support and internal storage as new features ). We’ll take what we can get.

Anyway, IGN seems to be on the vine with the latest regarding the latest model of the Nintendo DS, citing numerous but unnamed sources in their report that the redesign would cost around US$ 179.99, and will be launching in the Americas on April 4. That’s a bit of a hefty price, but it’s a good thing, considering that the Nintendo DS lite is still selling like hotcakes (selling 1.5 million units in November), making the DSi more of an optional upgrade than anything else. I’m sure I won’t be plunking money down on it.