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The hot news from venerable video games company Nintendo is that they have already launched their latest and greatest, the Nintendo DSi, to the local market in Japan to much fanfare, although reception is a little bit subdued due to the global slowdown, which have impacted Japanese consumer spending especially in the case of the high tech electronics gadgets sector.

The sales of DS for the fiscal of April to September was still very encouraging though, beating their only competitor the PSP by a 2 to 1 margin. However, Nintendo have seen sales of their DS slumping indicating that the market is getting saturated. Therefore the decision to launch the DSi might be influenced by this factor.

The DSi is an incremental update to the DS, although it is being marketed as the 'third platform' due to the larger changes. For instance, you get a much thinner shape now, thanks to Nintendo jettissoning support for GBA catridges. On the plus side, the screen gained some weight and is now 3.25 inches in size, both of them. Finally, the addtion of a 3MP camera also brings to it a possibility of being exploited in future DSi games. However, in a land where even the most spartan handphone comes equipped with 5MP camera CCDs, it's not that big a deal in the Land of the Rising Sun as it is elsewhere around the world.

The unboxing shots have already flooded the web as Japan receives the first batch of DSi yesterday, shipping more than 300,000 units in the first day alone. The rest of the world will have to wait until sometime in 2009 before Nintendo will ship worldwide. Just enough time for us to start seeing great games, hopefully.