No DS redesign. OK, DS redesign.

Poor man. Ninty's very head bloke here in the UK stated very recently that there were no plans to redesign the DS. Except, there were, he just didn't know about it.  (?!)

How odd.

Comments

[Shard]

Isn't PR great..

Next think you know, J Allard will be chatting you up at GDC ;)

[Pixel Kill]

Happens all the time in companies that big, especially tight lipped Japanese ones. It's entirely possible he didn't actually know, but I guess we won't know for certain.

[Paul O]

Given that he was interviewed just two days ago, it's more likely he knew about it, but just didn't want to say. Like Japan would be happy if he confirmed it first!

[nedrichards]

from what he intimated in the gamesindustry.biz version of the interview pretty much only two men and a dog work for nintendo uk anyway.

[Seb Potter]

Hmm, from the interview:

GamesIndustry: That's true obviously, but Nintendo does have a history of redesigning handheld hardware and there has been all this discussion about whether you guys are going to do a DS redesign this year.

David Yarnton: If I turned around and said to my staff that we're doing something new they'd probably throttle me, because what with this last 12 months of product that we've done and also what we've got in the first quarter...

GI: Can you categorically rule out then that you'll have a DS redesign announcement *at E3*? [My emphasis.]

DY: That's been rumoured, I don't know for how long, but we haven't got any plans at the moment. Nothing I know of.

GI: Presumably it's a very real possibility further down the line, maybe in 2007 or something like that?

DY: I mean, Micro was a surprise for us as well when that came out, so we weren't aware of that.

GI: Was that something that Japan basically just sprung on you?

DY: I think it's like when Apple launched the Nano - what's happening nowadays is very much to keep the element of surprise so when you're developing a product, you want to make sure it's released properly and you've got your production right, so you try and keep things pretty tight, so...

So basically he was telling us the truth. Expect a surprise announcement, expect it to be similar in nature to the Apple announcement about a smaller, slimmer iPod, or as the Micro was to the Advance, and don't expect it to be at E3. Seems to me Nintendo have been hinting about the new DS, have actually delivered on rumoured hardware ahead of everyone's expectations, and yet they're getting hammered for *not denying* the rumours less than 48 hours before the official announcement.

Has the world gone mad?

[Alice]

It's still pretty amazing that the head of an entire division doesn't know about hardware coming. Weird company communications!

[Shard]

Erm.. wasn't Seb's point that he probably did know..