Many of us are hoping that Santa — that morbidly obese, home-invading elf who sneaks into your house and stares, unblinking, at the supine, sleeping forms of small children in the middle of the night; "You're a naughty, naughty girl, aren't you?" he huskily breathes to himself — will load the nethers of our Christmas tree with lots of DS cartridges this Christmas.

Unfortunately, it looks like Santa's elves aren't going to have many to stuff into his sack. They'd better get cracking on programming some. This Christmas' DS game release list is looking bleak, with only another four games or so scheduled to come out before the holidays. Most of the problem is slow localization, though there's suspicion that Nintendo may want to clear the schedule so all Christmas money goes to the Wii. Florian Eckhardt

DS Cupboards Bare This Xmas [Kikizo]

Contact information for this author is not available.