The story goes like this. Nintendo brought the DS out as a "concept" system for their more hard core audiance and it would not be a new/replacement system for the GB line. Of course it was announced about a month after the PSP was announced. Nintendo R&D was still working on the next line of GB's when the DS launched. At fist the DS did only moderate sales. Then they started picking up steam and more titles. After a while, the PSP came out and the battle really took off. Meanwhile Nintendo put a hold on next gen GB devlopement and put more effort into the DS and Wii. Since the DS was rushed out the door to beat the PSP to begin with there was room to improve the unit. Thats why the Lite version came out. Now here is the kicker. At last years E3, Nintendo announced that the GB line would be put on hold "indefinitely" and that they would focus on the DS line. There has been no word that Nintendo R&D has started any work at all on the GB line again. So at this point it would be a safe bet to assume that the GB line is dead for now. Maybe in a few years (or a decade, who knows) they might bring it back. Until then we currently have the DS, and no news on what the next (or if there will be) another in the DS line.
I'm guessing that the next system will be a part of the DS line but only have one much larger touch screen. Dont forget that Nintendo says the official meanig of DS is Devlopers System and not Dual Screen like most people think. They do agree thatfor this model DS can be called Dual Screen as it fits. It just may not for the nextmodel. I havent seen to many games really take advantage of the dual screen. There have been a few like AdvanceWar: Dual Strike and The Super Mario titles that have really done well at using both screens, but the majority of DS games just tend to have simple place holder images on the second screen. Considering one of the major complaints about the DS is it's small screens I sticking with the notion that they will just go with a single, but much larger touchscreen on the next model. They may even decide to drop the ARM7TDMI CPU from the DS line and if so that means the GB line will be officialy dead as they will nolonger be able to play any of the GB titles at all. They may try to use software emulation, but I doubt it as this would require a good deal of time to devlope and they would rather have their in house coders working on other things. I just cant seem them paying a team of peole to spend a half year or more trying to make 10-15 yeard old game paks to work on a brand new system. They tend to like re-doing their games on the new system so they can sell them again.
I'm basing my thoughts on their past history and logical business sense, but some times a company likes to take a chance with their products. They might just run both lines, or maybe even drop the DS. I doubt it though. I can honestly say that Nintendo managed to get me back as a customer with their GAB and DS lines. I had forsaken them back in the early 90's and now I'm happy to see them making good products again. If the GB line is dead then so be it, but Nintendo is not going to budge one inch from the handheld market. I think the DS line is a worthwhile sucessor to the GB series and can accept it as exactly that.
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