Deal or No Deal for DS - Keep the Money... Open Another Case...?

Very good news I just stumbled on. Apparently, Koch Media signed on Deal or No Deal (the game) for Nintendo's DS, among other titles, as part of a UK distribution agreement with French publisher Mindscape, confident that the game - based on the TV contest - could be a surprise hit this year for the handheld.

"We reckon the quality of these titles means they have potential in the UK market," Koch spokesperson Stefano Petrullo told Eurogamer. "Deal or No Deal could be one of the biggest hits of this Christmas on DS."

I watched the contest a couple of times, but just to make sure everyone knows what it's all about, I looked it up on Wikipedia and here's what it says about Deal or No Deal: it involves a contestant, a host/presenter, a banker, and a number of briefcases (or boxes), with each having a different (and initially unknown) value. Each game starts with the contestant selecting one of the cases-this first case's value is not known until the game ends. Later on in the game, the contestant opens the rest of the cases, one at a time, revealing their value. Each time after a specified number of cases are opened, the banker offers the contestant a certain amount of money to end the game. If the contestant takes an offer, the game ends, otherwise the contestant ends up with the money from the first case.

Since the range of possible values for cases is known at the start of each game, how much the banker offers at any given point changes, based on what cases have been eliminated. To promote suspense and lengthen games, the banker's offer usually strays from the expected value dictated by probability theory, particularly early in the game. However, it is not uncommon for the bank's offer to exceed the player's expected value very late in the game.

Now, I must say that if the DS implementation of such a contest manages to keep the suspense going and really offer that "uuu what's the banker going to say this time?", Nintendo might just have themselves the DS' winner. After all, what's better game than one where you never know what's going to happen next?