DeadEye on 04 January 2012
A 3DS Lite is inevitable, but I would be really surprised to see one in 2012, except in Japan in November/December. It just seems way too soon for a redesign, even by Nintendo's standard. Of course Apple releases new iterations of virtually every one of their products each year and every mobile-phone seems to have a new version each year so it wouldn't be unusual that much I guess. I would almost certainly get one depending on how much the battery life was increased.
