Kotaku
Kotaku's favorite game analyst PJ McNealy is predicting that Nintendo will be releasing a new Game Boy by the end of the year.
We believe it is likely that the next version of the Game Boy Advance SP will ship as early as this holiday, ahead of most expectations of calendar year 2006.
McNealy's analyst report, emailed out to me this morning, breaks his reasoning down into four points:
Nintendo said that they would be maintaining the GBA as it's own handheld line after the launch of the DS and the company has averaged a new version of the GBA every two years. The SP hit in 2003, so it stands to reason that this Christmas would see a new version.
The DS has actually helped the sale of Game Boy Advance software. Even with the DS launch in November, GBA software revenue and sales were up double digits in December and January.
Nintendo is very concerned about piracy of Game Boy Advanced games, because of it's Rom-based cartridges. A new, more secure GBA could help reverse that trend.
A new Game Boy Advance would help Nintendo pull away all of the attention that would otherwise be focused on the U.S. launch of the Playstation Portable and the Xbox 360.
McNealy goes on to say that he thinks the new Game Boy will likely sell for $99 and the GBA SP will likely drop to $49.
This would likely lead to a huge jump in revenue for publishers like Activision and THQ, McNealy says.
We believe that a new GBA SP could mean between $10 million to $20 million of additional revenue for both Activision and THQ in Fiscal Year 2006...
He goes on to say that he doesn't think that the new system would require a whole lot of new research and development on the part of publishers.
What McNealy doesn't go into is how he expects the new Game Boy Advance to improve over the SP. I can t imagine what could be added to the SP to make the near perfect handheld any better. Maybe they'll do something to allow movies and music to be played on the device without the need of an add-on.
Ed's Note: If you're looking for the full report, sorry about that. McNealy's people just sent a note saying that it can't be distributed, only quoted, so I've had to pull it.
