[Update] ‘New DS’ console detailed

Update: Nintendo has issued a statement which disputes the accuracy of the quotes printed in Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun.

The paper in question reported Iwata as saying that a full successor to the Nintendo DS will feature “highly detailed graphics, and it will be necessary to have a sensor with the ability to read the movements of people playing."

Develop was one of the news outlets which reported on Iwata’s comments in The Asahi Shimbun.

Charlie Scibetta, Nintendo of America’s senior director of corporate communications, told news site Kotaku that "Mr Iwata did not make any comments regarding the functions of Nintendo’s future hardware systems. The answer to the reporter’s question was misinterpreted."

The original story follows:

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Nintendo’s successor to its wildly-popular DS handheld will boast “highly detailed graphics” and motion sensing capabilities, reports suggest.

The Kyoto-headquartered firm has released several iterations of the DS handheld over the past six years. Now for the first time, however, company president Satoru Iwata is openly discussing the system’s next-gen successor.

"[It will have] highly detailed graphics, and it will be necessary to have a sensor with the ability to read the movements of people playing," Iwata told Japanese newspaper the Asahi Shimbun, as quoted by Kotaku.

Iwata’s reveal of a next-gen DS comes after various anonymous sources suggested that such a device would be powered by Nvidia’s mobile-centric processor, Tegra, and will be released in 2010.

Iwata would not reveal any launch dates for the new system, however.

Tegra is an ARM-based processor with integrated Geforce graphics, and has been developed by Nvidia for use in smartphones and other mobile devices such as Microsoft’s Zune HD.