:)

Seriously, no offence to Luke, everyone makes mistakes, MS were doing their level best to mislead readers in that direction without actually saying it, and the last bit of the post is funny. But you should know better than to accept something without question, especially when the evidence to the contrary is at the bottom of the same post.

This quote from the press release gives the game away: '...and not just in the UK. We've seen uplift in all countries in Europe'.

In other words, what's the positive 360 news from this press release?

1) 214% sales increase in UK
2) Outselling PS3 2:1 in UK
3) Unspecified sales increase ('uplift') in rest of Europe

And what can we infer because they'd have said it if they could?

4) Probably still not outselling PS3 in other European countries

I don't know if it's outselling PS3 in Europe as a whole; UK is a big market, maybe they just don't have the figures to claim that yet.

If you don't like the games they've already released for the system, or can't handle waiting a while between games, just sell it already. Even if they 'deliver' on Thursday the game, whatever it might be, won't be out until next year anyhow. They are never going to release a top-quality first party game every month, so if that's what you demand, give up now. The alternative is sitting around on Kotaku threads for the next year posting whiny comments every time there's a long gap between Nintendo games, which will be most of the time, so that's not a great result for any of us.

Personally I'm having fun with Groovin' Blocks (and eh well... I picked up the gravity game today which is sort of ok... not really that into it so far though). I haven't bought any packaged games for ages but whatever. If Nintendo don't announce anything much on Thursday? That's cool (especially if they do announce a new DS with interesting features).

Even if there's a WiiWare drought too, and the system sits around Collecting Dust(tm), personally I don't really care that much. Not like it takes up much space, and I turn it off at the plug so it doesn't use any electricity.

Somehow I don't think so. Give us another 5 old franchises as good as those ones and Wii owners will be ecstatic. Originality? Fuck that. Give us quality.

If there's a problem with Nintendo making games (as opposed to a problem with them not making enough, which everyone agrees on) then the traditional tired Kotaku commenter opinion is that Nintendo's several new franchises (apparently you didn't check very recently) are the problem on Wii. Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Music - not that well-liked around here.

As for the game pick, uh, probably Punch Out (meh) but I'd like to seee Pilotwings...

I got some ambient/experimental compilation CD many years ago and it had a note on the back that said (not in those words) 'the sound quality on some of these tracks may be f**ing awful, but that's on purpose'.

Maybe they should've done that with the Metallica cd...

(However it was wider-screen than the old GB which had a square screen, which is what you're talking about.)

I think the reason they haven't made DS widescreen (apart from that this is probably just a minor upgrade and not really a 'new' system, although not sure about that) is that it would then have to be bigger - you still need the controls either side, remember. One possibility would be to make the top screen widescreen and keep the lower screen normal size, but it doesn't seem like they've done that.

But, 3.2MP camera? Why? It's not like you're going to use this as an actual camera - it'll be for use with games (in which case it needs about 0.5MP resolution for Wii screen/both screens, or 0.25 if it only covers one screen). I'm sure it will 'work' as a real camera but it's unlikely to be better than a cheap phone camera since guess what hardware they'll be using? A cheap phone camera. It'll probably be like my phone's camera, which is 2MP but would probably be acceptable quality at 0.25MP...

As for MP3 and WMA playback, it may well have MP3 playback (probably not WMA but who knows) but again, er I don't think anyone much will actually use it... once more, your phone does that, right? And it probably does a better job and you always carry it with you and micro-SD cards are hella cheap? And if your phone isn't good enough for you as a music player then you probably have an ipod already? Really don't see an mp3 player in new DS being anything more than a 'try it once, cool yes it works, now I'll never use it again' feature.

If it has a camera it should definitely work with Wii games technically (how would it not) although of course, whether they use it is open to question.

(Well, they must be announcing something, obviously, or why have press briefings; but I guess it could be, like, a new music-stand peripheral for Wii Music.)

Also, We Cheer looks pretty good. :)

Pipemania (or whatever it was called - that same game anyhow) was a classic back in the day, but I read a review that said it was pretty ho-hum. Also, it should definitely be WiiWare...

Interested in Orbient though, might pick that up as well. I should probably take a break from the block-dropping beats for a day or two. :)

@mlubczyk: Haven't played the game, but reading comments from others who have gives me the impression that no, it is not very good. There are lots of fantastic games on DS but personally I wouldn't expect this to be one of them either...

Of course if they've just basically made a camera and stuck a phone in it then eh, well that's fine I guess, but it doesn't seem like that would make for a nice small phone.

Ignoring this particular announcement, in general if it's a small phone then the camera sensor is going to be smaller than a normal compact digital camera and so quality will always be worse compared to compact cameras released at that time. However, as sensor quality (relative to size) improves in general, it could mean that phone cameras can become adequate... maybe. There are some physical limits, I think, with the really tiny sensors.

This is just speculation but personally, I wonder if they couldn't make improvements in image quality by reducing the megapixel count. If you have a lot of pixels on a sensor, surely that means there is probably space wasted in 'gaps' between the pixels that aren't accepting light. Using fewer larger pixels could improve quality. My phone has a 2 megapixel camera but the images are utterly worthless at that quality (even in bright sunlight) and are usually piss-poor even if you reduce it to quarter-area; I wonder if using a high-quality, genuinely 0.5MP sensor might mean it would produce better 0.5MP images than you can get out of it by just resizing.

If you're doing a hugely mainstream title (working with the movie studio responsible for, last I heard, the movie with highest Japanese box office of all time) you had better be on a mainstream platform. PS3 doesn't cut it, and even Wii is much less common than DS...

How many of the DS RPGs have you actually played anyhow? Me, I've played 0, so if this is the first one, that'll be cool. Personally, I liked the cutscenes in Professor Layton (the designs in that were rather Ghibli-esque already) so another game with nice anime cutscenes by the same developer is good by me. Still, if the actual gameplay sucks, I'll pass.