Nintendo DSi Black

The Nintendo DSi, can be used to take photographs, download games and even play music.

The DSi has two 0.3 megapixel cameras is 12% thinner than the Nintendo DS Lite. It features a memory card slot, for obvious reasons. But one of the consequences of all the extras, Nintendo has removed the GameBoy Advance cartridge slot on the DSi that made previous versions of the DS backwards-compatible with GameBoy games.

Mr Iwata said that gamers would be able to change the speed at which sound or music is played, meaning, for example, that they could slow down a foreign language lesson, or speed up and distort songs.

Nintendo said it had sold more than 77.5 million DS consoles worldwide since the device first went on sale in 2004.

In 2006, Nintendo revamped the DS, introducing a touchscreen version, the DS Lite. The Japanese games company has been credited with bringing a new audience to the world of gaming.

Nintendo's decision to release an updated version of the DS is seen in part as a response to the threat posed by Apple, whose iPhone and iPod touch music players feature motion-sensing technology and can also be used to play computer games on the go.