Nintendo DS's Future Developments

EA's just revealed its financial figures from the Q3 Christmas 2007 period (October-December), which shows the company making a whole lot more revenue than ever before.

When you break down the figures for handheld games, Nintendo DS was by far the most impressive performer, with sales up 122 per cent from $55 million in Q3 2006 to $122 million.

EA released only five DS games during that time; Boogie, Need for Speed ProStreet, EA Playground, The Sims 2 Castaway and The Simpsons Game but still the DS sales accounted for eight per cent of EA's total turnover.

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has been talking about the DS, Nintendo's future plans for its games and the possibility of non-gaming services being made available to download to DS from public wi-fi hot spots around the country.

He also said "One of the lifestyle proposals we'd like to put into effect in the first half of this year is an experiment aimed at getting people to use their DSs in public spaces as part of a larger effort to make the DS a more helpful tool for people in their everyday lives.

He went on to say "It's a portable, single-architecture platform that can receive anything given a wi-fi hot spot with over 20 million units in use in Japan and about the same amount in the US and Europe. I really think the idea of making it a gaming machine that's also useful in your daily life is a good one, and possible. We'll be keeping an eye on the experiment's results while hopefully increasing the number of places you can use your DS in progressive steps."

Like the PSP's satellite navigation add-on and the new Skype capabilities, the DS has also already had uses found for it in everyday life ? language translation software is available for it and in Japan the console has been used to give tourists information when they are on museum tours. Meanwhile, a recent test in the US enabled users at a baseball game to order food as well as watch the game on their DS.

In his interview, Mr. Iwata also speaks about there original idea to do something different with both DS and the Wii.

He went on to say "We knew that if games appealed to fewer people, the future was going to be bleak. And with video games being demonised by the public, it was hard to see how games could flourish in all that. So we knew we had to change it... Hearing stories about customers who seemed like they'd never touch a game scouring store shelves for a copy of Brain Age is what encouraged us."

The hardened gamer should rest easy. Iwata followed this up by saying that Nintendo would still support more experienced gamers by giving them games such as Zelda, and also more new challenging games although he thinks the benefit of pick-up-and-play titles is they allow experienced gamers to play with newcomers ? something the CEO said was missing from the market.

So the future of DS is looking bright for the casual gamer and the hardened Nintendo supporter Exactly what we'll be able to download to our DS in the future that's useful remains to be seen. Money off coupons for Tesco? Maps? We hope that Nintendo has something a bit more exciting up its sleeve, which im sure it has!!!

David is the owner of ConsolesMarket.com, which has thousands of consoles & games listed on the site at fantastic prices. http://www.consolesmarket.com . The site helps you compare the market as it has other merchants offering a full range of products for you to compare.