Nintendo confirms DS downloadable demo channel

Some exciting news has seeped out of Japan overnight, courtesy of a Nintendo press conference held to detail the company's DS and Wii plans for the coming months. While the majority of the information on offer concerned the Wii, two standout announcements emerged for DS owners.

First, Nintendo is set to launch the DS Demo Channel – a new online channel accessible through the Wii but designed to beam DS game demos straight to your handheld.

Wii game demos are regularly available for download, but the new channel will be exclusively for DS and will effectively turn the Wii into a DS download station. Such a channel has been rumoured but never come to fruition. It makes perfect sense for Nintendo to do – and indeed, it echoes a similar set-up by Sony for PSP.

The principle has actually always been available to developers – in fact, Roger Carpenter of Vivendi already revealed to us in an interview back in July the company would be utilising it for Geometry Wars.

"The Wii version of Geometry Wars: Galaxies includes a copy of Geometry War: Retro Evolved [the Xbox Live Arcade download game] that you can squirt down to any DS and then play for as long as you like, as long as you don't switch the DS off," said Carpenter at the time. "You'll also be able to do the same between DSs, using the gameshare option."

However, with an official channel and Nintendo support in place, publishers are much more likely to follow this example.

There was no news on when we can expect the new channel, but we'll keep you updated on any further information.

In the meantime, you can feast yourselves on the second big snippet of news to come out of the conference. Nintendo announced a new DS instalment of its turn-based strategy/RPG hybrid, Fire Emblem, is on its way.

Alas, nothing was shown of the game, so you'll have to content yourselves with the news it is coming and that we'll obviously tell you more as soon as we hear it.