Remember that weird, weird stuff about a Final Fantasy game that would be playable on both Wii AND DS? Here's the details. The game - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time - will be using something called the Pollux Engine, which just like the label says, allows for cross-platform play. That means people can play together across both systems: you on a DS, a buddy on the Wii. It works by basically porting the DS game to the Wii, re-arranging the screens from top-to-bottom to left-to-right (and adding in an XBLA-style border to boot). Why, then, you'd want to play it on Wii is anyone's guess, but everyone's been asking for bettter Wii/DS connectivity, so here you go.

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Reaction to the DSi thus far has been a little mixed. Yeah, it looks nice, but it also doesn't look much different than the DS Lite. Yeah, it's got a camera, but it's lost the GBA slot. And if we can't make up our minds about the device, why should we expect Sony to be any different? Sony director of hardware marketing John Koller:

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Look! It's a rare, collectible, plush squirrel! Do you even need me to tell you what game this an Amazon-exclusive pre-order goody for? No, of course you don't, not because it's obvious, but because you will buy ANYTHING to get your hands on a rare, collectible....did we mention collectible? A rare, collectible, plush squirrel. This isn't just some average, run-of-the-mill, mass-production plush squirrel. You don't give a squirrel like this to a baby and let it chew on it for hours. No. This is a vacuum-sealed in a glass case squirrel. *drools*

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The DS Lite was a replacement for the DS. Came in, took over the place, you never saw the DS Phat again. So will the DSi do the same thing to the DS Lite? Not in the US, says Nintendo Smile Machine Cammie Dunaway:

Right now we're still working through what the strategy's going to be here. But we think that there's huge untapped potential for the DS Lite. Because when you've got only one in every five households in the U.S., compared to one in every two in Japan, it says there's potential.

You've seen some of the work we've done this year with celebrities, that we're bringing a lot of new consumers in to the DS. So I think there's opportunity for both of them to coexist for some period of time.

You know, I still have nothing but a DS Phat. And when I see statements like this, I feel like the world's just passing me by...

Q&A: Nintendo's Cammie Dunaway Talks DSi, Club Nintendo [Wired]

Go on. Guess. The elderly? WRONG. Teenage girls? WRONG. Japan's biggest users of the DS are (according to this Nintendo-supplied chart, anyways) the same who were the biggest users of the GBA, and the Game Boy before that: boys. Specifically, 10-12 year-old boys. After that, though, it gets interesting. The most dominant demographics after the boys are women in their early 30s, followed by 10-12 year-old girls, followed by men in their early 30s. Not teens, not twenty-somethings, but people in their early 30s. Anyone in charge of putting the questions together for their Friday night pub trivia competition, these ones are on the house.

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"You're assuming we haven't already shown it to US developers," Reggie Fils-Aime chuckles.

I corned the president of Nintendo of America after spending all day being told that "no, I couldn't have an interview with anyone from Nintendo about the DSi because nobody knew anything about the DSi." I thought Reggie might be the man to ask, since he's the only one who had one at the whole event. And for all I knew, it was a hollow DS light with decals stuck on it to look like camera lenses.

"Wait and see," says Reggie. He pats the pocket of his coat where the DSi is kept from sight. "When the time is right... you'll see."

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While Japan is getting the DSi this November, the U.S. isn't. In fact, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said the company won't be bringing the DSi to North America until late 2009 because it wants to continue selling the DS throughout the holiday season. Nintendo Co., Ltd. president Satoru Iwata is even more vague, telling business paper Nikkei, "The DSi will probably be launched in the US and Europe next year." Outlining his vision of the DSi, he adds:

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Mystery. Solved. That mysterious Nintendo pedometer from the other day has turned out to be more than a patented pipe-dream, as it featured in yesterday's Nintendo Fall Press Conference. The pedometer is to be bundled with DS game "Your Life Rhythm", which is basically a Brain Training/Wii FIt kinda program, just for your DS. And all you do is walk. So exactly like a normal pedometer, then, just a little more expensive, and a little more fiddly, since a normal pedometer doesn't make you plug it into a portable gaming system just to see how far you've gone.

Your Life Rhythm Gallery

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Just yesterday Nintendo announced its latest DS iteration, the DSi. And today, the DSi pre-order fliers are popping up at the Sofmap in Akihabara. Says the flier:

Pressing announcement! On November 11th, the new model is finally arriving!
New DS Nintendo DSi Price ¥18,900
At last, the new model has finally been arrived!! The screen is lighter and a little bigger, and there's even an embedded camera! A SD card slot! These modifications seem fun!

Oh goody! Thing is, the Sofmap flier goes on to put the pre-order date as TBA.

「緊急発表！ニンテンドーDSi」　予約は未定 [Akiba Blog]

Mario and Luigi 3 Gallery