Nintendo Announces DSi With Cameras, Web Browsing And Music Playback

(PaidContent.org)  This story was written by Matt Kapko.

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Nintendo is releasing a new portable gaming console dubbed the DSi that features more multimedia features, but specs that fall well short of the consumer electronics industry. The biggest changes to the popular handheld gaming system are a pair of 0.3-megapixel cameras, a slightly larger screen, music playback and game downloads and web browsing via Wi-Fi all in a thinner form factor, Telegraph reports. Plans call for the refreshed gaming device to be released in Japan next month for about $180 and then other parts of the world in the second half of next year. Other features include a memory card slot, built-in flash memory and browsing via the Opera web browser. Users also will be able to change the speed at which sound or music is played back, if they'd like to slow down a foreign language tutorial, for example. Nintendo last revamped the DS in 2006 when it introduced the DS Lite with a touchscreen. More than 77.5 million DS consoles have been sold worldwide since it was first released in 2004, but sales have been declining in Japan as Sony's PSP has outpaced sales in the country for the last five months. The new cameras one pointing outward and the other pointing at the user can be used to capture images, edit them and share them in a variety of ways; eventually gamers will be able to insert their own picture into the faces of game characters. 


By Matt Kapko