DSi Not Bound For U.S. Until Well Into Next Year

Speaking to North American press in San Francisco this morning, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that the camera-toting, music-playing DSi won't be coming to our shores for quite some time. Fils-Aime said they wouldn't be bringing the DSi to North America until late 2009 because they want to continue selling the DS throughout the holiday season. He said that the music and camera functions are not meant to rival the iphones, but rather supplement game play. The onboard imaging software is meant to be a "fully interactive camera for your everyday life." The music songs are stored on the SD card in AAC so you can transfer between the PC. The DSi will have built in software that lets you speed up or slow down songs, change the pitch, and filter tracks. So you can do things like isolating the lyrics. You can also record your voice as a track and mess around with it. The DSi actually has two cameras built into it, one on the outside and one inside, centered on the hinge. Amanda Glasser