The Nintendo DSi, recently announced for a North American release in April, was almost a very different, very curious beast. According to a new "Iwata Asks" interview, it originally featured two DS game slots.
The original design for the digital camera-enabled Nintendo DSi, according to one of its designers, wasn't well received by the software developers at Nintendo, as the dual DS card slot design turned off game producers at Nintendo's Entertainment Analysis and Development Division. That meant going back to the drawing board.
"The response wasn't that great, and, to tell the truth, we'd sort of been expecting that," said Masato Kuwahara from Nintendo's Development Engineering Department. "According to the determined specifications, however, there was nothing we could do to stop it from turning out like that. We unveiled it to them, all the while doubting that it was going to be all right."
Kuwahara says that the dual DS slot feature, dropped in the final version of the DSi, was added in response to fan requests. It meant a bigger, bulkier take on the Nintendo DS, one that Kuwahara says was met with developer disappointment.
Calling the design of the Nintendo DSi a "source of some frustration for me," due to the marginal change from the DS Lite to the DSi, Kuwahara and the rest of the design team say they hope the smaller, less obvious updates to the hardware will make gamers happy. That includes things like larger LCD screens, a matte finish for the outer shell and reset options that are more user friendly.
Get excited!
Iwata Asks - Nintendo DSi [Nintendo]