News: DS conference! Spring 2006 session

February 15, 2006, 03:26 AM

by chazumaru, via Nintendo -
[permalink]

Nintendo held another of those DS press conferences last night and, as their own website reports, a bunch of interesting information was revealed there. While Nintendo is facing serious hardware shortages in Japan with the current DS, they plan to ship a million units of the new model in its first month. The DS Lite will be released on March 2nd, accompanied by titles such as Squenix's Seiken Densetsu DS Children of Mana and Mitchell's Shunkan Puzz Loop. Satoru Iwata of course went back over Nintendo's successful results of last christmas and confirmed that their new flagship handheld now has seven "million sellers" in Japan (and two more games should reach the mark soon). Among those, Doubutsu no Mori was the first DS game to reach the two million units mark in Japan, Nintendogs has sold over five million units worldwide and Bandai's Tamagotchi is the first third-party million seller on a Nintendo system in years. The DS is now expected to become the fastest system to ever reach ten million units sold in Japan, and a bunch of big games will be released throughout the year to make this happen.

Nintendo announced the much awaited New Super Mario Bros. would be released in May, whereas Tetris DS will be released (at a lower price than most other games) in April. Of course, the company is aware of how popular its Touch Generation series has been with the japanese audience so far. Three new titles have been anounced: Kanji sonomama DS Rakubiki Jiten, DS Bimoji Training and Shaberu! DS Oryouri Navi. The first one is a kanji learning utility, the second one a calligraphy practicing software, and the last one an interactive cooking guide (not to be mistaken with Taito's Cooking Mama). The previously announced Tabi no Yubisashi Kaiwachou DS will be released in march for a budget price. The first five volumes of this "assisting and translating tool for japanese tourists in vacation on a foreign country" will focus on China, South Korea, Thailand, Germany and the USA.

Third party developers naturally have much more faith in the system than in the Gamecube - hence Gyakuten Saiban 4, Super Robot Wars DS, Shin Sangoku Musou DS, Mario Basket 3 on 3, A.S.H., Final Fantasy III, Tales of the Tempest and sequels to Tamagotchi and Mushiking have been mentioned during the conference - including new screenshots for some of them. For instance, those tiny pics of Winning Eleven hint that KCET is porting the engine of its late PlayStation versions (which, from WE4 to WE2002, mark when the series dramatically ramped up in Japan and Europe). Judging from the popularity of the series worldwide and the successful sales of the PSP version, Konami has a major card to play here, and they unsurprisingly confirmed the game would support the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

Finally, Nintendo announced the upcoming release of two new peripherals. In june, they will release a Nintendo DS Browser for 3,800 yen, in cooperation with Opera Software (they have their own announcement page on the subject), so you can rub insert credit news with your tactile screen from anywhere you want. And Game Gear fans will shed a tear with the release of the "1-Seg" TV Tuner, which allows to surf channels on the touching screen while watching TV on the upper screen. That one will likely not make it outside Japan, though.