Released over the weekend, Nintendo’s fourth iteration of the money-printing DS burst into Japanese shops with the company’s now expected, nationally audible, cash register clamour. Famitsu.com reports cross-generational queues having formed outside several major electronics retailers prior to store opening, with a high proportion of shoppers aged in their 20s or 30s. Eager gamers could choose from three different middlingly inoffensive colour schemes: Dark Brown, Wine Red and Natural White.
It really has become difficult to fathom why the DSi LL needed to be developed, slapped with suffix and released. Admiring the galleries of Japan’s early birds, one notes the near ever present background display of standard DSi consoles, quietly wondering if the 93 percent increase in LCD screen size was a necessary addition. Coupled with depressing truths like the woeful digital rights management locking purchases to a single handheld, there is a surprising lack of cynicism as Japan gleefully accepts another marginal hardware change. I guess Grandpa doesn’t mind re-buying his collection of Nintendo-themed clocks.
The console, ballooning in physical size to a figure closer to that of the original DS, comes packed with everything the greying gamer could desire: jumbo stylus for brittle fingers and a selection of DSiWare. On opening the clam-shell for the first time, Japanese gamers can revel in the unbridled excitement of two individually themed editions of Brain fucking Training and the scintillating DS Easy Dictionary.
It is hard to understand the burbling excitement aroused by a hardware change that amounts to little more than the type of depressing upgrades one expects to make after their first purchase of reading glasses. It’s like leaping from a standard size calculator to a big buttoned “make sure you don’t hit plus when you mean to hit subtract!” digital abacus. Still, Japan undeterred, here’s looking forward to first week sales figures for the good ship Nintendo.
Via: Kotaku
Why does it exist? Because Nintendo’s year over year profits are down, easy as that. What better way to make a end of year push than modify an existing device, keep the same feature set, and jack up the price and sell it to the Nintendo faithful?
No thanks, Nintendo. I was dumb enough to let my curiosity get the better of me and buy a DSI to replace my DS Fat, but I’m not touching this under powered netbook sized machine they’ve created.
Some of us don’t have asian sized digits, genius.