News on DS

[A Black Falcon]

129 UK pounds for the Datel HDD, according to the press release (since Datel is British)... it might be cheaper here (than that number directly made into US dollars), but still, I'd expect over $100 for sure...

As for peripherals... as usual, Nintendo is releasing all kinds of stuff in Japan and not here. I mean... so many of the DS's 'Productivity' titles and apps don't come out over here, how can they seriously expect it to do as well here as is there?

Out in Japan, some for quite some time now (note I'm not giving the actual Japanese names, as I don't think they're overly important for the context of this list)

-Band Bros. (that music game)
-DS Dictionary 1 (Japanese-English, English-Japanese, with a Japanese dictionary and kanji regognition; you'd need to rework it for a US release a lot of course, but a similar product would be nice)
-Play-Yan (the media player for gba)
-DS Training (Brain Age - US)
-DS Training 2
-Brain Flex (the other brain training game)
-card game collection title
-Learn English title

And announced, but not out yet
-Dictionary 2, an improved version of the dictionary that's coming out soon in Japan. 1000 more Kanji, etc...)
-Bimoji Training - practice your kanji (okay, maybe this one has no purpose over here, with an completely alphabetic writing system... :))
-the Digital TV Tuner
-Web Browser
-Speak! DS Cooking Navigator - cooking guide program recently announced. Digital cookbook with voice recognition for going to parts and with speech (to speak to the user)

I'm probably missing some.

Will we get any of these products? Brain Training is announced, and the web browser is probably likely, but the others... nah. It'd cost too much for Nintendo to remake them into apps Americans would want for them to actually make the effort...


Of course, every Japanese title picks and chooses which titles we get, leaving a frusteratingly large list of games we never get to see, and it's always really annoying, so this is nothing special at all... it just shows, in this case, Nintendo's lack of commitment to repeating overseas what they have done in Japan with truly making the DS attractive to all age groups. It's one thing for them to ignore Magical Vacation or for Namco to drop Tales games, but this is another... (oh yeah, and while we're at it, how about Pokemon: Mysterious Dungeon? I know we're getting Trozei, the puzzle game, and Pokemon Ranger, but how about that one? I haven't heard anything, oddly...)