November 11^th, 2005 (1:19pm) - Reggie Fils-Aime, the executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America, recently sat down with CNN and discussed Nintendo’s plans for the future. A new piece of information that came out of this interview is news of a future DS hardware revision.

A DS hardware redesign was to be expected by Nintendo, seeing how they’ve repeatedly redesigned the Game Boy Advance hardware. Unfortunately, Fils-Aime did not reveal a tentative time frame of when we would be seeing this hardware revision on retail shelves (it’s likely to make its debut at E3 2006).

"As soon as [the DS] was launched, we started looking at ways to tweak it visually."

Much of what Fils-Aime had said has previously been stated by Nintendo countless times, including the Revolution being a lower-priced console than either of Sony of Microsoft’s next-generation game consoles.

"Value has been a key card for us this generation and we’ll continue to play it," Fils-Aime told me. "Do I expect us to be at a lower price point than our competition? Yes I do. Have we determined a price yet? No we haven’t."

Fils-Aime acknowledged that Nintendo has learned from its mistakes with the GameCube hardware, including its boxy design, and lack of compelling third-party software.

"I think there were some lessons we learned with the GameCube that we need to apply to the Revolution," said Fils-Aime. "First, we’ve got make sure that the titles in the first six months are strong and can drive sales. We’ve also got to make sure the console is attractive visually. And we’ve got to deliver on the right consumer needs. With GameCube, at the time, portability was thought to be a big factor – that’s why it has a handle. Obviously, that wasn’t the case."

While fans have been very hopeful in believing that Nintendo will open their arms and pursue entering the "HD era of gaming," Fils-Aime once again confirmed that Nintendo will not look to pursue this path, as Sony and Microsoft are.

"What we’ll offer in terms of gameplay and approachability will more than make up for the lack of HD," he said.