Opinion: US analyst claims DS Re-Lite is on the way but has he confused it with DS 2?

According to the dictionary, an analyst is someone who is skilled in the detailed examination of the structure and content of something.

We hope that's the case for Evan Wilson, a senior research analyst at Pacific Crest Securities who focuses on "filmed and interactive entertainment with an emphasis on the changes technology is forcing on the distribution and consumption of content", because if he's wrong when it comes to his startling news that Nintendo has redesigned the DS for the second time, the man is likely to be laughed out of the industry.

But we assume he has excellent connections. Why else, as reported by Gamespot, would he claim: "Our contacts indicate that a refreshed DS is complete."

Considering the continuing success of DS Lite, though, it's surprising news. Wilson reckons the new version of DS Lite will be thinner, lose the GBA port, and add some sort of onboard memory, as well as larger screens.

Now, the first options makes complete sense in terms of cost-cutting. With support for GBA dropped throughout the industry, there's no reason to have a GBA port in the DS and that, along with general optimisations, would provide options to make the device thinner.

However, onboard memory and larger screens are much more problematic as they raise the problem of backwards-compatibility for the 30 million-plus DS Phats and DS Lites Nintendo has already sold. Even if hardware with bigger displays and some sort of flash memory or hard drive is released, developers can't rely on using these features because the vast majority of DS owners will be playing on hardware that doesn't have them.

And frankly that's mainly the reason we're sceptical this is another version of DS. It just doesn't make commercial sense. What does seem far more logical is the possibility Wilson has confused what he calls a 'refresh' with what is effectively DS 2.

Our thinking goes like this. Nintendo will, at some point in the future, release a new handheld. It could be named for the Game Boy gang or, more likely, it could be the second release in the DS family. Either way, it would have to be marketed as a brand new piece of hardware, even if it offers the sort of backwards compatibility that the GBA and the DS enjoyed (i.e. it plays DS 1 games).

Now, if you look at the longevity of the GBA, the handheld was launched in March 2001 and, over six and half years later, is finally coming to the end of its life. With DS, it was launched at the end of 2004 and so by the same logic should be around until 2011.

But it takes time to design hardware and set up the production lines. DS was launched three-and-a-half years into the GBA's lifecycle, which, in turn, would see DS 2 emerging in the summer or autumn of 2008. Hence Nintendo (a company notorious for designing portable hardware and then sitting on those designs for a year prior to full-scale production) would now have to be well into designing its new console. Presumably, that's what Wilson's contacts have leaked.

So this isn't DS 1 Mk3. It's DS 2 Mk1. QED (maybe).