Apparently, with the release of the Nintendo DSi impeding in both North America and Europe, Nintendo is also thinking of creating a complete online store for games, which could then be downloaded onto its Wi-Fi-capable handheld.
Website Kombo reported that, at a special Nintendo Club event, those attending talked about how both Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games would be released on a service similar to Virtual Console. It seems that Nintendo has also said that it plans to initially release the games that it has created and released for the two now obsolete handheld platforms. The
DSi Virtual Console is set to initially arrive in Japan, only reaching North America and Europe later.
It appears that Nintendo has contacted the representatives of the website and has told them that the Virtual Console-like service has been confirmed for the Japanese market but that there's no official position regarding how and when it arrives in the United States. Eurogamer also reported that Nintendo told it that any talk about a downloadable service for GBA games was, at that time, “purely rumour and speculation,” which probably means that the company is not yet ready to announce this initiative.
The DS Lite has some sort of backward compatibility via a GBA slot included in the device, but this slot will be absent from the DSi (no doubt, a very tough piece of news for those playing Guitar Hero on the Nintendo DS). So, a downloadable service makes quite a lot of sense if Nintendo is interested in getting more value out of its extensive back catalog of videogames.
At the moment, there is an installed base of just above 2 million Nintendo DSi handhelds in Japan and
pre-orders in North America are bigger than those for the DS.
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