Source Confirms New DS Hardware Includes Camera

We here at GameFlavor were excited (and a little bit surprised) to see photographs of what are supposed to be prototype screens for a successor to the Nintendo DS. It is somewhat surprising that the company would consider replacing the current generation of hardware so soon; after all, the DS lite remains one of the hottest selling electronic devices in the world. However, the leaked photographs do seem to jive with the claims of other sources who have recently spoken to us about Nintendo's plans.

Officially, the company remains silent about the new hardware. In a public statement made today, Nintendo niether confirmed nor denied the existence of the new hardware, which was leaked by the Japanese newspaper Nikkei:

"The Nikkei newspaper wrote a recent story about a DS solely based upon their own research and speculation, without interviewing Nintendo. While Nintendo is always working on new hardware, we have not made any announcement about a DS and we cannot comment on the Nikkei story.”

We spoke to a source close to Nintendo -- a software developer, for those who are wondering -- and he confirmed that the company is indeed working on secret new hardware to replace the DS. What's more, he stated that he has seen the new device, and could describe some of its features. The first thing he noted was that the prototype has saw had larger and higher-resolution screens than those in the current generation device. It appears to him that the company will be sticking with the same 4:3 aspect ratio, rather than opting for a wider display. However, he said that the new prototype DS had some features not currently included on the current model, most notably a camera. He told GameFlavor that the camera was of fairly high resolution and pointed away from the player. He and his colleagues had fun pointing the camera at background objects so as to make it appear that the screens of the DS were transparent.

While the source cannot be named for obvious reasons, we are highly confident that 1) Nintendo is working on a DS replacement, which is already fairly far along in development and 2) the planned device has two screens and a built in camera.

A photograph leaked by Japanese newspaper Nikkei which they claim is the successor to the current Nintendo DS.

[Via: Nikkei, Sources with Nintendo]