Rumour: New DS Devkits In The Hands Of The Pokémon Company, Select Third-Parties

Earlier this week, an alleged third-party inside source shared with games site CVG that development kits for the DS2 are in the hands of certain developers.

"It’s genuinely the best thing I think I’ve ever worked with," the anonymous source told CVG. "I can tell you that it’s got a ’tilt’ function that’s not dissimilar to iPhone, but does a lot more. We know that The Pokemon Company are getting special attention with it."

Since the actual firm named "The Pokémon Company" is a merely marketing and licensing front for the franchise, CVG may be referring to Game Freak, the company that develops the mainline Pokémon RPGs. CVG’s inside man also mentioned that the SDKs were currently being shared with developers on a trial basis as the end hardware product has yet to be finalized. Adding credence to CVG’s inside man is the fact that Game Freak recently announced a brand new Pokémon game and Satoru Iwata confirmed that tilt functionality was, in fact, being considered for the next DS. Apparently a stylus with tactile feedback might be in the cards, too.

With some comparing Nintendo’s release philosophy to that of Apple’s in recent years, the idea of the company simultaneously maintaining low and high-end SKUs for their portable products doesn’t seem so far-fetched. Following that train of thought, one would expect the DS Lite to be discontinued sometime this year to establish the Nintendo DSi as the new low-end model.