Well, this is quite an unexpected move by Nintendo. The Japanese company seems to be keen on keeping up its dominance on the handheld gaming consoles market, and for this reason, it's already hard at work on the next-gen DS model, which will apparently arrive this year. And we're not talking about a minor upgrade, but about a full move into the realm of 3D, since this future console will apparently be capable of displaying 3D images without using any glasses.

Indeed, that's an absolutely huge step forward, but, for the time being, there's very little information available. In fact, the press release published by Nintendo Japan that reveals this piece of info provides only few additional details about what this future 3D portable gaming console will be all about.

So, first of all, it would seem that the temporary name for this future DS iteration is “3DS,” which, in fact, is quite catchy. However, there's no info on whether this is the final name or not, because the press release in question does mention “temp” in relation with this moniker. Furthermore, the future 3D-capable console will be backward compatible with all DS titles, a feature that will certainly make a lot of gamers happy.

Unfortunately, these are just about all the details currently available, but rest assured that Nintendo has left somewhat of a hook, announcing that they will provide further info on their next-gen console during the E3 show, which starts on June 15 in L.A. Well, really looking forward to that moment.

This move is a bit unexpected, to be honest, since the Japanese gaming console manufacturer has only recently announced the US launch of the DS XL model featuring a much wider display than that of the DSi, while also offering a couple of interesting improvements in the hardware department. But, then again, since this is the year of 3D, Nintendo chose its timing well.


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