As if to make up for the fact that the Japanese don’t have a new handheld launch to look forward to, Nintendo has announced the launch of three new DSi colours, which will join the white and black flavours on store shelves in Japan on March 20th.

There’s a lurid pink model, which I think is the least attractive of the three, while the lime green is suitably bright, but still not to my tastes. Much more pleasant is the metallic blue number - very reminiscent of the Enamel Navy DS Lite.

Watch-Impress has more pictures. Go and have a look and be envious of our eastern brothers and sisters. Still, we’ve not too much longer to wait - it’s around six weeks until DSi launches in Europe and the US.

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The pattern’s starting to become familiar - DSi still reigns supreme in Japan, with PSP in second place. Wii’s just about scraping into third, with PS3 hot on its heels.

That said, it’s interesting to note that even with the release of Street Fighter IV this week, PS3 couldn’t raise its game enough to topple Wii for a single week. So perhaps once it’s over this slightly fallow period, Nintendo’s casual-courting console will start to pick up sales, particularly as the bigger third-party releases hit (how Nintendo must be looking forward to Monster Hunter’s arrival). It’s hard to see Wii de Asobu: Metroid Prime having any effect on Wii’s sales next week, particularly as the series is much more popular in the west - if any console sees a sharp rise in sales next week it’ll be the 360, with Square-Enix’s Star Ocean IV on the way.

Figures below, courtesy of Chart-Get.

DSi 53,483
PSP 34,256
Wii 21,016
PS3 18,656
DS Lite 14,810
Xbox 360 9,833
PS2 5,332

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“Ha! We’re getting DSi on April 5th!” snort the Americans.”Ner ner ne ner ner!” retort the Europeans, thumbing their noses at their US counterparts as Nintendo announces a launch date of April 3rd in PAL territories the following day.

“We’re getting a blue model, though!” laugh the US residents.

“Ah, but we’ve got white!” is the response.

“Yeah, well ours only costs $179.99!”

“Oh.”

Yep, it’s going to be a penny shy of £150 for us UK residents, which for my money is £20 too much - but then Nintendo is marketing this as a premium option rather than a replacement for the Lite, so the price is hardly a shock. No pricing details have been announced for the rest of Europe as yet, and no further info regarding DSi software is yet available - expect more news in the coming weeks (though probably not from me, sob).

Will you be buying DSi, readers? Do let me know by posting a comment below.

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Defying the credit crunch once more, Nintendo has spent 12.8 billion yen on a site near to its headquarters. It plans to use the site for research and development of new software and hardware, with its existing R&D department likely to merge with the new place.

Many people have questioned Nintendo’s reluctance to expand further given how much money it has been making of late, and it finally seems that it’s spending a bit on making more games. How much of this new facility and its staff will be allocated to creating Wii’s successor isn’t known, but I’d wager that that is going to be highest on Nintendo’s agenda, as it attempts to figure out how exactly to follow two of its most successful consoles ever, while revolutionising gaming and simultaneously remaining accessible to its expanded audience. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.

Alternatively, perhaps Nintendo has decided it doesn’t really need third-party support, and is just going to release more Wii and DS games to sate its loyal fans, who’ve been vocally complaining about its directional shift over the past few years.

Whatever it’s used for, the likely outcome is ‘more games’, and should that mean a worthy follow-up to Super Mario Galaxy, then I’ll be more than happy.

Thanks to Kotaku (via VG247)

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Eurogamer has reported that Nintendo of Europe is keeping quiet on release date details for the DSi, after IGN revealed the handheld could be landing in the US as early as April.

Last night’s story from ‘an inside source’ suggested the DSi would cost $179.99 (50 bucks more expensive than the Lite) and would launch on April 4th. Nintendo of Europe dismissed the information as - you guessed it - ‘rumour and speculation’, with the camera-packing handheld apparently bound for release in Spring 2009.

It seems as if Nintendo will be positioning DSi as a premium option for hardcore gamers in the west rather than suggesting it as a replacement for DS Lite, presumably continuing to target the expanded audience with the latter, and bigging up the downloadable games on the former as a nod to the real enthusiasts. Because girls and grans can’t use the internet, can they?

That said, a camera with funny face-morph software is bound to appeal to a wide market, so it’ll be interesting to see how Nintendo markets this - particularly as the DS isn’t facing particularly strong competition from its handheld rivals in the west.

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Some people claim Nintendo’s success is harming the games industry. Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) thinks the opposite, claiming the Kyoto giant ’saved Christmas’ during a time when most industries were suffering from the global recession.

GI.biz carries a report that the company’s Jesse Divnich suggested the Wii sold over 3.2 million units throughout December - a record figure.

Meanwhile, EEDAR estimated DS sales as 3 million units, representing a 21% increase year-on-year. Wii’s rise was a whopping 137% - mainly thanks to demand far outstripping supply in 2007.

Though Divnich hints that Wii could have performed even better. “For December 2008, we project that the Wii would have likely sold north of 4 million units had supply and demand been in equilibrium,” he suggested.

Wii’s total was more than twice its nearest home console rival, with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 selling just over 1.5 million consoles, with Sony’s PlayStation 3 struggling to 700,000 units - a 12% drop on the previous year.

On the software front, Wii games took three of the top four positions, with Wii Play the likely Christmas number one, with Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit joining the 360 version of Call of Duty: World at War on the best-seller list.

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Still no inkling as to when it might come out over here (with DS Lite still selling so well, it’s conceivable Nintendo could wait until around Christmas time) but DSi will almost certainly reach the west in 2009, and will perhaps surprise a few people when it does.

Initial reaction to the console was that it wasn’t really worth bothering with, most gamers seeming happy with their Lites, but once word gets out about the handheld’s new features, plenty will upgrade its status instantly to ‘must-have’.

Early evidence, for example, suggests the Photo Channel is a thing of wonder - allowing you to tweak your shots in numerous amusing (and frequently clever) ways simply by tapping and dragging with the stylus. Is a permanently grumpy relative spoiling your Christmas pics? Simply force a smile onto their sulky face. Mirror effects, morphs, colour bleeds, random doodlings and much more are possible and - more importantly - accessible. Amateur Photoshoppers will be in heaven.

The new channel setup when you boot the DSi up reeks of quality, too, making DS feel even less like a toy and, potentially crucially, less like just a games console. It’s not a portable Zelda/Mario/Brain Training player, but a must-have gadget. Sure, its sound player might be limited and its camera low-res, but Nintendo wasn’t going for a high-end all-singing all-dancing multimedia gadget so much as something which looks pretty damn cool that you can have a lot of fun with.

As if all that wasn’t enough, its matt finish means your console won’t look all horrible and smudgy under a certain light. And then there’s DSiWare to look forward to (more on that later). While it’s easy to see western audiences being slightly wary of upgrading compared with the gadget-obsessed Japanese, Nintendo’s current marketing clout is such that DSi will almost certainly be a massive hit when it, er, hits in 2009.

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Recession? Pah! Nintendo sneered in the face of the credit crunch by posting record sales of its insanely popular handheld for the week ending December 6th, says MCV.

It broke its own record, which was set a year and one week earlier, and that record beat the incredible launch week sales of the PSP in September 2005, back when Sony’s handheld looked set to conquer the world. How times change.

Chart-Track reckons the DS might yet beat this week’s sales in the run-up to Christmas assuming Nintendo’s supply can keep up with the frothing demand. Now if only Nintendo could ramp up production of Professor Layton and the Curious Village, we’d almost certainly have an undeniable classic as the Christmas number one this year, as prices of the prof’s much-sought-after first adventure reach a crazy £75.99 on Amazon. I love Brain Training as much as the next man, but I’m getting a little tired of seeing Kawashima’s grinning mug leering down from the upper echelons of the All-Formats Top 40.

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Satoru Iwata has revealed to Reuters that Nintendo shifted 800,000 Wii consoles during Thanksgiving week in the US. This represents more than double last year’s sales over the same period which were a comparatively weedy 350,000. At the same time, Iwata spoke of DS’s continued success, with the dual-screened handheld selling 20% more than in November 2007.

Further to this, Videogaming247 is reporting that Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has estimated Wii’s November sales to be around 1.4 million, compared with 800,000 for the price-reduced Xbox 360 and a paltry 400,000 for the PS3. While unlikely to be bang on the money, Pachter’s predictions are rarely too far out, and it looks as if Wii will have easily outsold its two HD rivals put together. 

800,000 consoles in one week? What credit crunch? Nintendo laughs in the face of global recession. Could be that Miyamoto’s assertion that entertainment comes second only to food in terms of life’s necessities may just be right.

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It’s been a long time coming, but finally you can chat away to your Wii friends using the Wii Speak Channel - assuming your pals have the peripheral in question and have downloaded said channel from the Wii Shop, that is.

And it all works very well. My wife’s round at her parents’ house today, and we were both able to talk in a fairly relaxed manner, with Wii Speak picking up our speech very well. While we got the odd bit of echoey lag (I could hear myself speak when I raised my voice, which came through a couple of seconds after I’d spoken) the sound quality was decent, and background noise was barely noticeable. At least until my son decided to start shouting from the other side of the room…

Once you’ve downloaded the channel and accessed it from the Wii Menu, you can start adding your friends into a central space by ticking off their names - a Wii Speak mic will appear next to their usernames assuming they have said channel installed. Once you’ve added them, they’ll appear in a circle within your own space, which has plenty of room and can be scrolled around by holding the B button and moving the pointer. If you want to chat with one or more people, it’s a simple case of selecting their icon and inviting them to a chat. Assuming they accept you can then start having a chinwag. A nice touch is that you can add Miis to represent you, and swap between them instantly. Sound waves move out from the icon when you’re speaking while your Mii will turn to ‘face’ who you’re chatting to, with their mouth moving up and down as you talk. Lovely stuff.

You also have the ability to send short voice messages to friends, even if they don’t have the channel installed. I was given a warning that it might take a little while to arrive in my friend’s inbox, so I’ll check with him later to see if and when it arrived.

It’s a shame this wasn’t bundled with the Wii, as it would have offered a great social option from the outset. As it is, Nintendo will do well to make its audience more aware of this, as it’s a function which will no doubt appeal outside the core gamer demographic.

I’ll report further on Wii Speak’s effectiveness next week, once I’ve tried it out with a few more Wii Friends in a round-table chat and also in Animal Crossing.

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