Nintendo Wants Everyone to Own a DS

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime commented on the company's strategy for shifting from its popular DS handheld to the newly announced DSi, hinting at Nintendo's big-picture goal and an American release date in the process.

"We would ideally want one DS to one person across the Americas," the executive told G4. "That's a huge, lofty goal, but that's certainly what we're trying to get to," he explained.

Fils-Aime also elaborated on his statement that the DSi won't hit American shores until "well into" 2009, saying that it won't come until "after April 2009," or after the start of Nintendo's next fiscal year. He again cited the DS Lite's non-stop success in the U.S. as the reason for the delay.

The popular frontman for Nintendo's American operations also seeked to quell early rumblings of the DSi's integrated camera and audio player not being quite up to snuff: "You shouldn't think of this as the world's best digital camera or the world's best audio player," he asserted. "You need to look at it through a lens of entertainment, and certainly through that lens it's going to over-deliver against expectations."