Nintendo not planning a 3DS Lite
There's no fat left to trim, apparently.
Whereas the DS's ugly-duckling launch model was replaced by the sleek DS Lite a year after birth, Nintendo insists it has no immediate plans to follow a similar route with its impending successor.
Speaking in the latest Iwata Asks interview on the platform holder's official site, 3DS hardware designer Kenichi Sugino revealed that, thanks to lessons learned during production of the DS Lite, it will be tough to further slim down the new handheld with any future hardware revisions.
"The first thing (Nobuo) Nagai-san, who's in charge at the Uji plant, said to me when he looked over the designs for Nintendo 3DS before mass production began was 'This time it's fully packed right from the start'," recalled Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata.
"Oh, really?" replied Sugino. "But he was right. That's why we don't have any short-term plans for creating a more compact version of Nintendo 3DS like we did with Nintendo DS Lite."
"Yeah," added Iwata. "When making Nintendo 3DS, we used all our tricks for Nintendo DS Lite - and more - for cutting down on size right from the start."
So, just a cynical attempt to entice fence-sitters holding off on a 3DS purchase until a more fully-featured model is announced, or could this genuinely be a new approach for the platform holder? Time will tell.
The 3DS launches in Europe on 25th March.