Nintendo Japan has finally announced shipping details of their upcoming Dual Screen handheld model, the Nintendo DS. The unit is scheduled for a release on December 2nd, 2004 in Japan (compared to a confirmed USA shipping date at November 21st).

The Nintendo DS includes the PictoChat software built-in, which allows text and picture message transfers between Nintendo DS users.


Update: Japanese Nintendo DS™ software lineup - 12 Japanese titles shipping on release (click here)

Update: 220V Asian model announced, shipping schedule, licensed Japanese accessories & suitable stepdown converter (click here)

We have now opened preorders for the original Japanese and US versions of the Nintendo DS to ship on or around December 2nd at a price of US$ 169. The set is expected to ship including a 110V AC adapter as well as a Japanese manual for the Japanese version, English manual for the US version.

Nintendo DS (Japanese)

Nintendo DS (US)


Preorder notice: Even though we try to avoid any possible price increase/decrease, please note that the preorder price is not a 100% confirmed shipping price. In case of supply shortage, we will notify all preorder customers prior shipping with a price update.

We also expect Nintendo to release an official Asian (220V) model Nintendo DS shortly after Japanese release as well as to announce a launch title lineup. We will add newly announced products to our Nintendo DS section once they have been confirmed and all preorder customers are welcome to notify us about possible order changes and addons at any time. If not subscribed yet, please check out our Personal Agent on any products page or category listing to get informed on updates automatically.

Nintendo DS specs:

portable gaming console w/ 2 LCD screens

ARM9 67 Mhz Main CPU

120K Polygons/sec

30M/s pixel fillrate

4 Mbytes RAM

ARM7 16.8 Mhz Secondary CPU

2-D: 4 backgrounds, 128 sprites

GBA backwards compatible

Wireless multiplayer for up to 16 players

Game stored on rewriteable media up to 1GB