History of Nintendo DSi

Console Development

In mid-2006, the big bosses received statistical data indicating that, on average, every household in Japan had one Nintendo DS console. Then they began to ask themselves, how can we make it so that there is not one console per household, but one for each family member?

At the end of 2006, Masato Kuwahara was tasked with developing a new console in the Nintendo DS family.

Masato Kuwahara at the GDC 2009 conference talking about the development of the DSi console.

The main problem in creating a new console was that it was not developed from scratch but had to fit into the existing line of consoles. This imposed many limitations. It was a strange situation: on the one hand, to improve DSi console sales, a few exclusive games could be released. On the other hand, the DSi should not be positioned against previous consoles. Releasing games that would run on all Nintendo DS family consoles would not promote DSi sales.

Therefore, the console had to sell on its own.

Nintendo quickly realized that they needed to come up with a special concept that would explain to people why they needed to buy or upgrade their console. This is how the "My DS" concept came about. The concept is very simple: not just slightly improve the old console, but add features that would customize the console for a specific user. That is, when picking up the console, an ordinary player should understand that this is their console, not just some random console with games. And they should carry it with them, not keep it at home.

To achieve this, Nintendo decided to add the letter "i" to the console's name. In Nintendo DSi, the "i" at the end means "I." Similar to how Wii sounds like "We" and translates to "We" in English. This was meant to emphasize the individuality of the model.

Interestingly, "i" also sounds like the English word "eye," and Nintendo tried to incorporate this wordplay into the logo design.

At the same time, the developers had to remember that they were working on a continuation of the Nintendo DS family. That is, the new console should not go beyond what could be considered a console in the Nintendo DS family. The developers at Nintendo complained a lot about these limitations.

The Nintendo DS Lite was taken as the basis for development. And the idea of adding a camera was immediately proposed. As the console developers pointed out: the touch screen was the console's sense of touch, the microphone its ears, and the cameras were to become its eyes. Masato Kuwahara said that they almost immediately abandoned the idea of a rotating camera, simply adding two separate cameras: one to take selfies and the other to take pictures of something else. This turned out to be cheaper and easier than implementing a rotating camera. Moreover, as the development of phones shows, it is still easier to install two different cameras than one with a rotation mechanism.

Of course, the installed cameras were not very good. They had 0.3 megapixels, which at the time was not even close to phones. But, on the other hand, the console's screen resolution was 256 by 192 pixels. A 0.3-megapixel camera allowed taking photos with a resolution of 640 by 480, making the photo almost 2.5 times larger than the screen. This meant the user could easily zoom in on part of the image, making it not seem small.

The next step was adding an SD card slot. Initially, the developers did not see the need for adding memory cards, but Shigeru Miyamoto insisted on it. And then, when various interesting changes started to appear (music recording, photos, app store), it became clear that a memory card was essential.

Nintendo did not stop at these features. They also improved old features. The processor's clock speed was doubled to 133 megahertz. The RAM was increased four times to 16 megabytes. The audio system was completely redesigned to produce louder and higher-quality sound. Volume control became digital. Even the speaker holes were changed.

And many other changes. But the most significant changes, according to the developers, were related to the console's software and cartridge slots.

Game Boy Advance Games vs. Nintendo DSi Games

Nintendo has almost always included support for older games in their consoles from the very beginning. This was the case with the Game Boy Advance and its support for Game Boy games, and it was the same with the Nintendo DS. Both the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo DS Lite supported older Game Boy Advance games.

The idea of supporting older games was abandoned almost immediately. Moreover, the developers had the idea of making two slots for Nintendo DS games. And they even made such a prototype.

Masato Kuwahara, speaking at the GDC 2009 conference, showed a prototype of such a console.

And... This idea was abandoned. In 2007, the development team had almost finished everything. At least, a final prototype was made, which did not satisfy the console developers themselves. When Satoru Iwata held that prototype (in the photo above), he only thought that the console was too large.

Therefore, Masato Kuwahara gathered the information development department and asked them to evaluate the console. The reaction was not very good. Only 3 out of 10 people wanted such a console.

Of course, the second cartridge slot was the first to be cut. After all the cuts, they reduced the console by 5 millimeters in width and 2 mm in thickness. The most interesting thing is that as soon as this reduction was made, everyone immediately said that it was much better. Well, in my opinion, this is definitely not worth losing the second cartridge slot or Game Boy Advance game support.

Ninteno DSi on the left and Nintendo DS Lite on the right. Find three differences.

And here we come to the moment that still raises questions for me. It turns out that instead of Game Boy Advance games, consumers were offered Nintendo DSi games. But there were no interesting DSi games in the DSiWare store. So why was this necessary?

Kentaro Mita said that the turning point for the console was the addition of the Nintendo DSi Shop. And if you look to the future, the idea is very cool. Considering that the wi-fi module in the console was improved and could now connect using all modern protocols, and the internet had expanded significantly by that time, adding an online game store seems like a logical step.

Only, in my opinion, they were let down by the developed "My DS" concept. Nintendo viewed the DSi Shop as an opportunity to sell extremely cheap games that would never be bought on a cartridge. For example, a Zelda calculator or Animal Crossing clock, various route maps in major cities, or simple Tetris. But at the same time, these games could customize your console. Overall, the logic is understandable, but as practice showed, it was wrong. Online stores would become very important in the future, and users would expect not cheap games, but as diverse a lineup as possible from such stores.

Software

Only after all these changes did Nintendo start developing the software. And they started with the menu.

If we go back a bit, we can see that the menu in DS consoles was very simple. Discarding the top part, you were left with 2 available options: Pictochat and DS Download Play. Since games were not installed on the console, the remaining two menus with DS games and GBA games were only activated by inserting a cartridge.

Now we have more apps, including those downloaded from the store. Therefore, the menu was completely redesigned to be horizontal.

The menu has 39 slots for apps at the bottom. And at the top, a random photo will appear.

After this, Masato Kuwahara made the Camera app project.

Cameras by themselves are not very interesting, but the ability to edit your images is something. Therefore, the Camera app was supposed to have many built-in features for editing images.

Similarly, the Nintendo Sound app was implemented. Various features were added to allow playing with music or your voice recorded through the microphone.

And the third was the DSi Shop app, where you could download other apps.

Epilogue

The main problem with this console is that all the ideas that were laid into it during the development stage did not take off. The photo and sound functions are good for literally half an hour after starting, and then they are not very interesting anymore.

Journalists having fun at the console announcement.

Internet capabilities and user-generated content also did not interest anyone. Perhaps the biggest breakthrough in the Nintendo DSi was the free Flipnote Studio app. In this app, you could draw your own animated note (imagine drawing many sequential pictures on the edge of a notebook, and then flipping through the notebook to watch a mini-movie).

All these shortcomings have only worsened in our time. It is unlikely that you will play with a 0.3 megapixel camera and a drawing app when there are much more interesting and modern options. Therefore, when buying the console, you can only look at the technical changes, which are also not as clear-cut as one would like.