The screens of the Nintendo DSi XL are 93 percent larger than those of the Nintendo DS Lite model.
The screens of the Nintendo DSi XL also feature a wider viewing angle. The new system launches in both “Burgundy” and “Bronze” colors, and comes with pre-installed software Brain Age Express: Arts & Letters, Brain Age Express: Math and Photo Clock, as well as two free applications: the Nintendo DSi Browser and Flipnote Studio.
Nintendo DSi XL will also come with a larger pen-like stylus. America’s Test Kitchen: Let’s Get Cooking and WarioWare D.I.Y. will also launch for the Nintendo DS family of products on March 28, providing consumers with new content that can be enjoyed on any Nintendo DS system. Nintendo says that games like these demonstrate the enhanced experience available with the Nintendo DSi XL.
Nintendo DSi XL specs:
• Two 4.2″ (diagonal) screens, TFT color liquid crystal (260,000 colors)
• 2 VGA (0.3) Megapixel cameras
• 16 MB RAM
• 256 MB Flash Memory
• Wireless 802.11 b/g connectivity
• Width 161.0mm, Length 91.4mm, Thickness 21.2mm
• Stylus length: 96.0mm
• Large stylus length: 129.3mm
• Weight: 314g
• Battery life: 4-5 hours maximum brightness, 13-17 hours minimum brightness
• Charging time: three hours
• DS card slot
• SD memory card slot
• AC adapter
• Stereo headphone/Microphone connected terminal
“Nintendo finished 2009 with a bang, and we’re continuing our momentum into 2010,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing, in the press release.
More info about Nintendo’s DSi XL here.
MacDailyNews Take: This type of thing will compete for iPad and iPod touch dollars. From what we see, Nintendo seems a bit confused about how to proceed with their handheld devices. Still, at less than half the price of Apple’s entry-level iPad, some looking for handheld gaming may consider this vs. Apple’s iPad and iPod touch. We’ve found the games for the DS systems to be expensive vs. games for iPhone OS systems and most users would quickly end up paying more with a DS and a decent collection of games vs. an iPad or iPod touch plus games. What do you think of Nintendo’s DSi XL?
uhh, it’s just a big DS!
re: MDN’s take – to be fair, before the app store, DS games were the least expensive games you could buy, and, in a retail setting, they still are. Sony’s PSP games are more expensive yet, and Nintendo’s own downloadable games are pretty price-competitive with Apple’s.
Still, it’s just a big DS. Eat your own words Nintendo… the iPad is going to be big! (and I don’t just mean “a bigger iPod touch”)
piece of crap!
Parent’s will be the ones deciding that.
For the Apple iPad: it has the ibookstore for kids to read, but the bad news is porn may be leaking its way in
For the Nintendo: There are EDU games … but the bad thing is that it’s all games. Parents don’t want kids spending time on Naruto
The DS is great. I bought one for long flights. Unfortunately the games are too expensive for a casual gamer (if you can even call me a casual gamer). After 3 months I gave it to a friend’s 4-year old.
I can’t see this new version changinguch, just buying time.
and WHAT, $190?? For another rehash of a five year old platform? Come ON Nintendo, that’s bullshit. If I were in the market for a device for $190, I’d buy an 8GB iPod touch (if I didn’t already own one!)
it looks cheap because it is. In all senses of the word.
I used to want one of these before the iPod Touch came out. If you’re all about gaming, the DS is better. But I like to be able to switch over to a movie when I’m traveling (or a variety of other things). Can a DS play a movie off of it’s SD card?
Really, the iPod Touch is the more complete device and I think the only people tempted by the DS are those that just want to game and nothing else.
I prefer the “Big Assed Table”….not.
whats crazy about this, is… the thing just gets bigger and bigger, seeing it sitting on a table (a recent Engadget vid)… it looks like Nintendo is getting in the netbook game!!
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Also, the notion of turning your DS XL sideways to read books, sold in the Nintendapp Store, is just… insane…
And if its insane, that means, they’re already doing it in Japan.. and its porn.
Thank you and good night (from Shanghai)
I’ve never understood the “dual screen” concept in a handheld. Seems useless and awkward.
And this “new” thing has a stylus? How 1996 is that!
Fail.
Another “loaded up with buzzword features” POS. Cheaper, offers less content. The big one, it’s all abut the OS boys and girls, and Apple has that in the bag.
Those are the real Fanboys…
Look at the iPhone, you have more games, they are cheaper, you can carry all the games with you all the time, it is a multimedia device, you can make phone calls, use it a video camera, etc..
Look at the PSP or the Nintendo DS, you need to carry a bag for your games, open the compartment of the console to change the disc or cartridge, games are expensive, battery don’t last longer, etc.
Who is the real fanboy?
We are playing games while China is taking over the world.
On the bright side, it will be China that will have to pay the biggest part of the Global Warming prevention costs.
First they give us 2 screens.
Then it’s 2 camera’s.
Now it has 2 stylii !! One large, one small. ! ? ????
There truly is no end to Nintendo’s innovation!
Ok, that’s not true. It ended about 5 years ago. Even then they were more like being dragged kicking and screaming into the light with little or no idea what the hell they should be doing.
And do these larger screens have higher resolution? Or have they spread their paltry pixel count out even further? If it has more resolution, what about older games?
16 MB of RAM and 256 MB of Flash memory? Did I read that right?
This thing doesn’t even win the bullet point contest.
And I couldn’t find the actual resolution of the screen anywhere.
“Who wants a stylus!? Yuck! NOBODY wants a stylus!”
–mAc
God you mac fan boys make me ashamed to be a mac user…!!!
The nintendo gameboy / ds / ds lite / dsi and now dsi xl is a very good bit of kit and has been proved this by sales for the thing! We have 4 in our household… kids love em, even the gran has one!
Combined with an R4 card it makes it a very good purchase! The games are ‘free’ if you catch my drift!
“TROY – Look at the PSP or the Nintendo DS, you need to carry a bag for your games, open the compartment of the console to change the disc or cartridge, games are expensive, battery don’t last longer, etc.”
You can carry hundreds of games on one cartridge if you use an R4 card
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@ Jim Bob
Actually I was a Nintendo fanboy long before I had anything from Apple. SNES, 64, Gamecube, Wii (Gamecube mkII), most of the handhelds (couldn’t resist all the innovative tech, backlight, 2 screens, wow, upgrade me, quick) But they whittled away my enthusiasm by rehash after rehash, whether it’s the games or the hardware, it’s just generation after generation of tweaking yesterday and calling it tomorrow.
Increasing screen size without adding resolution (which I assume they’ve done) and boasting it’s a feature? This new console is 5 years old before it came off the drawing board. By Nintendo’s own standards! In reality, it’s way older than that. It’s not about the tech, it’s about the fun. That’s what allows them to get away with this to a degree. But it can’t last forever and for me the time has been and gone.
What’s a stylus?????????
Great article on a parent’s perspective between an iPod touch and a Nintendo DS. It was written by former Macworld editor Peter Cohen on Monday:
http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/02/22/ipod-touch-vs-nintendo-ds-the-parents-perspective/
I think Nintendo doesn’t really have any idea about what to do with their handhelds anymore, so they’re just fishing around for random gimmicks.
They lost focus after the Gameboy Advance SP. That redesign made sense, it solved nasty problems with the original Gameboy Advance. This one doesn’t. It’s just a bigger DSi. What the hell does that solve? The horrible way a regular DSi is small enough to fit in your pocket?
And what’s with all the superfluous bullshit like web browsing and cameras? Nintendo should concern itself with making the DSi do only one thing, and do it well: gaming. Period. They shouldn’t try to make it some kind of multimedia PDA, because that puts them in direct competition with alot of other mobile devices out there that do the ‘multimedia PDA’ job and do it better.
The question “Why should I buy an iPhone AND a DSi” becomes far more compelling if the answer is “Because the DSi’s sole purpose in life is pure unadulterated gaming, where with the iPhone games are just a nice bonus… They’ll never be the focal point. Apple’s attention is divided, Nintendo’s isn’t”.
Except Nintendo’s attention is divided these days. They need to cut that out before their advantage begins to slip any further.
I have a PSP and an iPhone and I play very different games on them.
The iPhone fo me is for burst gaming. Play a bit of PvZ for a bit, the move on.
My psp is more of a sit down and play as is my xbox 360
all are great and serve slightly different gaming roles.
My wife is a lifelong Nintendo nut and will probably get this device eventually… maybe. I can’t say for sure, because recently she’s been playing with her iPod touch more and more and her DSi less and less. It’s just the sheer convenience of buying games through the app store. Plus, the app store even has those hack-and-slash action RPGs she loves so much.
Don’t get me wrong, she still loves her DSi — she just doesn’t need it all that much any more, so it gathers dust while she happily pokes away at her iPod.
While I’m commenting: Will this new device fix the frankly retarded way that the DSi, connects to the internet? Currently, it’s an awkward, mostly manual mess, with many games requiring you to set up the internet connection again just for that game.
——RM