Should I believe Iwata, President and CEO of Nintendo (The ENTIRE freaking company) or someone from NOA who couldn't make a decision about anything important to the company and likely doesn't even know what the head is planning before the hands are passing it out.....

That's a tough one.

For some reason this quote reminds me of Duke Nukem Forever...

Charlie is lying to avoid a panic in the U.S. market for DS hardware.

I find this hard to be believed, to be honest. We had the original story translated by our Japanese guys and Iwata DOES confirm that the DS's successor is in the works. I seriously doubt that the Japanese source would misquote Iwata.

The way I see it, this is likely damage control. Iwata perhaps said too much and Nintendo is known to keep everything quiet until the right time to talk shows up. They are now covering everything related to that because they want to keep things secret.

Lucky for Nintendo, the general public wasn't paying attention during his little peak behind the curtain, so I doubt DS sales are gonna take a hit in the mean time. But I would be surprised if we don't see the DS2 at E3 this year and released this Xmas(or possibly early 2011*).


*Gotta give the DSiXL a holiday season to sell on it's own before making the uninformed realize that they should have waited another month or two.

Unfortunately, Nintendo needs to be secretive about its upcoming hardware because Sony has a long history of ripping off their innovations. Nintendo needs to make sure the features of the PSP2 are written in stone before they unveil the DS2, or else the PSP2 might ripoff its innovations.

At this point I think it is a given that the PSP2 is going to ripoff the touchscreen idea, but if the DS2 is going to have something like motion controls then it would be best if this is kept under wraps until the last minute.

cough*SIXAXIS*COUGH

didn't he also say he didn't even want to talk about a successor yet because the current generation is doing so well?

wouldn't a successor you know have better features like a better screen and what not? Its kinda dumb to freak out over it if its a given, unless its not a given. Japanese companies try not to make idle promises, they don't want to disappoint fans by breaking promises. The cat is out of the bag though...

I think they're more worried about people misinterpreting that quote as "new handheld SOON" when Iwata was probably talking about some years down the road.