Rumors You Can Carry with You

Lots of information about the DS, but is it true or false?

June 2nd , 2004

Ah, the glorious weeks after E3 - ripe with rumors. Well I'm here to bring you the latest rumors about the Nintendo DS. Needless to say, the rumors are all plausible and some even probable, however none are confirmed and I would not advise placing money on any of this information as Nintendo is well known for shocking us with what they choose to do.

Rumor number one, is about the price of the Nintendo DS. Apparently, a small conference took place at Nintendo HQ (not far from where I live...) recently. No games were shown, however it was (supposedly) mentioned that the price of the DS will reflect the resources of young age group that Nintendo is targeting.

The second rumor is along similar lines. This one is about the release date. It's been speculated that we will be able to have the DS shipped out to us by the end of November. This would be great - just in time for the holidays and not too far off. Wal-Mart, EB games, and Gamestop are already offering pre-orders. I would, however, advise against pre-ordering anything at this point, as the price and release date may change over time, and you'd really hate yourself for paying $300 if they dropped the price to $150 before the handheld was even released.

The final rumor is technically about the Sony PSP, but it's always a good idea to keep an eye on the competition. Sony is rumored to be planning on selling the PSP at a very low price, enough so that they probably wont make money off of the hardware itself. This is an old practice in the gaming industry, known as "Give away the razors, sell the blades." It means that they're going to sell you the console cheap, then expect you to buy a lot of overpriced games. This strategy has worked well in the past for companies like Atari, and it is quite possible that Sony means to attempt this strategy themselves.

~ Link Skywalker