It looks like Nintendo’s hotly awaited DS handheld console will be in stores in Japan on November 4th, and in US shops a week later, if reports from Japanese retailers are anything to go by.
The console is likely to be priced at US$180 – which is about €145, but expect it to be about €180 in Europe and nearer UK£180 in Britain when it appears in early 2005.
Four games are expected to launch with the console in Japan, with a total of eleven on the market by the end of the year. The first games for the DS will feature many of Nintendo’s most successful characters and intellectual properties – titles include Metroid Prime: Hunters, Super Mario 64×4 and the rather exciting Animal Crossing DS. Animal Crossing DS is the prime reason I’ll be buying the new console, and don’t expect any sense from me for a few weeks afterwards.
Nintendo aims to sell three million DS consoles by March 2005. Whilst the DS currently has a “less cool” image than the PSP that it’ll be competing with, Nintendo’s unbeatable intellectual properties coupled with the DS’s wide range of features and lower price mean that they might well achieve that goal.