GDC: DSi-specific game cards in dev

By Tom Bramwell Published 26 March, 2009

Hardware man confirms they're coming.

Nintendo has said that boxed games which rely on DSi-specific hardware functions like the new camera are still in development.

Speaking at GDC yesterday (thanks Kotaku), hardware group project leader Masato Kuwahara said that the "enhanced game cards" will allow developers to "create textures from photographs taken with the DSi camera", among other things.

Nintendo has previously hinted at DSi-specific games when it confirmed they would be region-locked, but up to now the only examples are games distributed through the DSi Shop, which is understandable given that the shop itself is new to the reworked handheld.

The DSi launches for GBP 149 in Europe on 3rd April, and you can read up on what we make of it in our Nintendo DSi analysis.

And for those of you just waking up to it, yesterday saw the announcement of DSiWare titles for the West, the promise of 1000 DSi Points for each buyer, and a host of other announcements in Satoru Iwata's GDC keynote.

Like The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (and we do like it). Seriously, wake up!

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (3) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • carrotcake #1 3 years ago

    yay, glad to hear dsi will be fully utilised
    8 days till launch!

  • insincere_dave #2 3 years ago

    Didn't the enhanced bit give you the idea that these will still be compatible with the old DS (and thus region free) whilst providing additional functionality on the DSi? Seriously, you're determined to make a region-coding story out of nothing.

  • layleeloo #3 3 years ago

    Personally I couldnt give a flying monkeys toss about the camera and camera related games. Its old hat but just in a mobile device. It was crap before and will continue to be. Only reason I would consider upgrading my DS Lite is for the extra Ram and teeny weeny bit larger screen size, but the camera portion for me will never be used. I wish they would stop focusing on this one gimmick.