Please see my comment a little bit above yours

Dropping old technology and advancing hardware is what is known as "progress", nintendo's not moving backwards by any means.

graphical enhancement isn't easy when you have to:
1) maintain asect ratio and pixel dimensions for backward compatibility. The best they could do is offer bigger and better screens (larger pixels) like they apparently have. Unless you like playing with black borders a la Game Boy Advance on the DS (I dislike playing GBA on DS with a passion), and even if you got graphical enhancement you'd be left with games that only work with one or the other device. I don't think this will go down well, at least not now. Compatibility is important.

2) speaking of which, it's probably time they removed that GBA slot, as they have. Like some have said, anyone who really wants GBA has a GBA device, I would think. There is probably a minority who would miss it, and that's too bad. It's not like you could even play multiplayer with GBA on the DS anyway, so... I tend to think it's about time they tossed it, but it is a bit of a shame, too.

People still have plenty of time to buy a Lite or original DS (second-hand), and it means a Lite isn't 'totally useless' given this new hardware.

3) Carrying your DS Lite, MP3 player, digicam and portable DVD sounds like a chore, and I doubt the DSi is aiming to compete squarely with all these devices, but Nintendo have made it a more social, fun and useful device; in fact the upgrade is quite substantial, if you ask me. Nobody is forcing you to buy it. Nintendo make an offering, you decide if it's worth it.

4) they have made many fun enhancements to the device and some much needed storage, and more internet capabilities. I think they have done well under the circumstances. I just hope the battery is user-replaceable like the current Lite.

For this price I think it's low-value, but not to worry; you don't have to import in about 6 months. I fail to see the views of people calling this a minor update when so many Game Boy And Game Boy Advance and DS updates before this offered far less (and also omitted backwards compatibility).

Great going Nintendo, I say.

tekdroid you have a valed point i really think that they have a pretty big upgrade considering what the ds started out with( touch screen and a mic ) and even before that was the game boy sp and that was in only 2005 that it cam out and it only had a light up screen that's a three year upgrade right now the ds is being used for everything but gaming.

so the fact that nintendo is even putting out a piece of hardware like this is amazing i mean com on we cnat forget the people that dont have a homebrew card or the one's that have NEVER ever heard of home brew.

and other than gutair hero who really use's the gba slot now.

after the dsi comes out if want to play a gamebot game then i will just pull out my old gameboy advance

I'm pretty sure sega has the say in whether or not to make pso a dsi only game, unless I missed the part where nintendo is developing it. and even then it'd only be dsi exclusive if they decide that downloadable content is integral to the phantasy star zero experience.

That would be awful. We would have to download 15 programs for each game we wanted to play in our SuperMactendo, after that the damn interface would be confusing as all hell. And it would cost more than a used 20GB PS3 ($800 people!!! ITS USED RLY!!!!).