The big N news going around is that the DS is getting a redesign. I don’t see much happening after the Revolution controller was revealed.
My favorite design was this Powerbook style one.
Hopefully Nintendo will decide to put in some bonuses on the new version, however I very much doubt that they will put wider screens or more buttons or analogue sticks on it like most of the mockups on that site.
They won’t. I’m pretty much just hoping for larger buttons.
These designs are meaningless, since the actual hardware wasn’t taken into account. I could design something thinner than an ipod Nano with duel 5″ LCDs, but engineers will just laugh at me and finance guys will kick my ass for making it cost $1000.
Even something as simple as the placement of headphone jack should be consulted with an engineer.
The first edition PSPs all suffer from a “Square Button” problem. Because the design team didn’t want to move the figure buttons a few millimeters right so, with some PSPs the Square Button sometimes gets stuck under the LCD panel.
It can be unstuck, but it’s just an example of how right cliche is.
However… if they can fit a “PS2″ in the PSP’s body, they should be able to put a “Nintendo 64″ in a thinner or at least smaller body, at least it makes sense that you could.
Perhaps the DS’s size is due to a matter of money. As the parts become cheaper, they will eventually release a revised version of it.