nintendo has been solid throughout the years for video gaming.  it lasted through the competition from sega, microsoft, and sony.  it has been extremely profitable through gaming only.  nintendo makes its money through selling games and the hardware to get the games to people.

but the dsi changes that.

for the first time, nintendo is throwing its support behind non gaming things.  without a doubt the dsi is meant to be the main sku for the ds line.  this will be the first time that something other than gaming is more than a peripheral.

so what are the effects?  nintendo gets its first real shot at the wide world of consumer electronics.  it also gets its first real sku ambiguitity.  will it taint nintendo's view of video games?  will nintendo put more focus on the harware?  will it move into products outside of gaming and if so will it lose its newfound drive to dominate the market?  will sony and microsoft start to focus less on gaming as well?

In my very humble opinion, I believe that Nintendo is using the DSi as an experiment of sorts.

As they've said, it's a 3rd platform, much like the DS was to the Gameboy line of products. DS turned out to be a success so guess what? It became their lead platform..

Similar situation here, except the key difference is that the experimentation is being used to dictate the course of the next handheld and true successor to the DS platform..

Obviously Nintendo are thinking about their next handheld now that the sales momentum is starting to hit the point of decline (Iwata said this so don't flame me on that) and so they're experimenting with the DSi.

If the DSi succeeds well then u can bet ur bottom dollar that the DS2 will include a camera or two (most likely higher in quality), more media integration such as music and video playback, more internal memory, expanded DS shop and other such features.

If it fails, and by that I mean if the DS sales fall faster and harder because of the DSi, expect to see a DS2 that has more innovation and quirkyness that set the DS apart in the first place.

THE DS LINE WILL NEVER HAVE AN ACCELEROMETER

Quote me on that but its highly unlikely due to motion sensing being a major differentiating factor for the Wii. Nintendo said they toyed with the idea of havig a touch screen based controller for Wii but decided against it because it would be too similar to the DS.

DS2 though may hav basic motion sensing capabilites, because by then, the Wii will be in the home stretch of its life and I'm sure the Wii HD will hav much more advanced and precise controllers that will set it apart.

No, no, no and no....

What do you mean by "will Sony and M$ start to focus less on gaming aswell"?

1. DSi is the third installment in the DS line, you may have had a point if DSi had been the first or if it would have been a completely new handheld.

2. The reason for DSi:s existence is the saturation in Japan. Looking at the sales in Others and Americas, there would be no reason to introduce a new one. It's just that the current number of gamers isn't enough to keep DS sales as where Nintendo would want the sales to be in Japan. There are still around 100 million people in Japan who don't yet own a DS, so the potential is huge.

3. Blue ocean, Nintendo wants to expand the audience even further. Eventually this new audience will buy games, if there are games that interest them. Expect the brain training games have a sales boost because of DSi.
The further you go on sales and the larger audience your machine reaches, the smaller the attach rate is going to be, but profiting from the hardware makes attach rate more or less irrelevant. I'm betting that the guys at Nintendo have been laughing their asses off, because of Sonys chosen strategy with PSP and PS3.

4. Expect new kind of games coming for DS, maybe even some DSi specific games, but they definately are coming, so that Nintendo could keep on selling games.

5. Nintendo didn't make DSL obsolete, since the GBA slot was removed, although the DSiWare is superior to GBA slot...

After all, only by targeting largest possible audience, you are focusing "less on gaming", atleast gamesaleswise per units of hardware.

I'm fairly sure that's what Nintendo is planning though, bad translation or not.. See the rest of my post for why I believe that.