Analyst: DS2 to be announced this year, launched mid-2010

Analysts are great. They make pronouncements about the future that, while generally no better informed than things a lay person might say, have been paid for and thus are deemed weighty.

Just yesterday an analyst was getting us all hot and bothered with talk of piracy costing Apple and the developer community $450 million, and now one of his peers has made headlines by telling the world when he thinks the DS2 will arrive.

“We believe that due to the aging technology, the possibility of new competitors in 2011, a decline in publisher support and piracy, Nintendo will launch a successor to the DS within the next 15 months, and likely announce such in the next eight months,” said Jesse Divnich, analyst for EEDAR.

This is all fairly uncontroversial: the DS is certainly waning as we creep into the second decade of the 21st century. Some may doubt whether Nintendo will announce another handheld so close to the release of the DS XL, but given its recent rapid-fire rate of hardware updates we wouldn't be particularly surprised.

In fact, we've predicted it, though with the name Game Boy Evolution.

Divnich also mentions piracy, which has dogged the DS since its arrival.

“Piracy continues to be an issue, not just for Nintendo, but for its third-party publishers as well. Whilst the release of the DSi has slowed down piracy, that slow down will only be temporary as hackers have already managed to bypass the new security systems built into the hardware."