I sure hope the research and design group at Nintendo scours the internet as much as we do at the CGC, because this might be the best fan created system redesign ever. However, gaming companies tend to only release system redesigns when sales have slowed. The recent PSP redesign led to a huge Q4 for Sony, and was sold out for a good portion of December in Japan. This is worth nothing because despite the DS's success, Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson believes Nintendo has already finished work on its successor.

"Our contacts indicate that a refreshed DS is complete," Wilson said. "It is thinner (it has no GBA port), has on-board storage, and larger screens. However, we do not expect a revamped Wii or DS until sales begin to tail off in all three major geographies."

Taking a quick perusal of Nintendo's portable system history, anyone can tell you they like to do redesigns. So, let's do a quick analysis to see if Mr. Wilson knows what he's talking about or if he is just making stuff up to get press. Frankly, I don't think these analysts have any real inside sources. Rather, they just look at a combination of sales history and system release dates, coming to their own conclusion.

Surely, any new DS will be smaller and have bigger screens. And, by reducing the size, there won't be room for a GBA slot. Wow, I'm a genius! And, since like Mr. Wilson I too have the Internet, we're going to play Nostrodomus. If he can, so can we.

1989: GameBoy Original
1996: GameBoy Pocket
1997: GameBoy Light (Japan only)
1998: GameBoy Color
2001: GameBoy Advance
2003: GameBoy Advance SP
2004: Nintendo DS
2005: GameBoy Micro
2006: Nintendo DS Lite

The Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite have sold 47.27 million units as of June 2007. In Japan, the sales ratio of the Nintendo DS to the Sony PSP is about four or five to one, a figure maintained on a weekly basis. 2007 was the first year since 2003 that Nintendo did not release a refreshed portable system. In the last ten years alone, Nintendo has dropped seven new variants on the public. A constant flow of new systems began with the success of the GameBoy Pocket, and has continued to this day.

So, what does the CGC think? We think predicting a new DS redesign in 2008 seems stupidly obvious. Any freshman in high school could do a quick pattern analysis and tell you that it's around a 70 percent likelihood (given the last ten years) we'll see something new in 2008. And, more than likely, it'll be at E3. Maybe I should get a job at Pacific Crest Securities. Those financial guys make big money and clearly don't have to do a lot of research before releasing statements to the gaming public.

Maybe we'll get lucky, and Nintendo will hire the guy that produced this video. My only fear here is that it has too many moving parts, and Nintendo has shied away from things that fold, flip and slide in one box. Usually, they just choose one of those features. Also, their portable stuff is typically pretty rugged. Kids drop them, dump food on them and treat the screens like garbage. This mock up doesn't look that durable.

Regardless, the CGC is happy to see there are people out there spending countless hours producing these kinds of videos and offering their predictions to the world. They're inventive and fun, and surely give us a taste of what's to come.

Yet, the most notable point here is that Mr. Wilson, the DS Redesign artist and I all agree on one point: Playing Nostradamus is fun.