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Next-gen Game Boy to Hit Stores This Year?
Jason writes "CNN's always enjoyable Game Over column has an interesting story up about Nintendo's plans to launch its next generation Game Boy in 2005, as opposed to the expected 2006 release. The column predicts official word on the new GBA will come during Satoru Iwata's keynote at GDC. As yet, no features are known, but author Chris Morris speculates this could just be an incremental step, rather than a full-fledged generational leap."
It was announced very early on that the DS was NOT meant to be a replacement for the GBA - reading between the lines indicates that it was intended almost solely to be a way for Nintendo to maintain their handheld hegemony in the face of the imminent release of the PSP. That being the case, it should be no surprise to anyone that Nintendo has another handheld in the pipeline. Again, they as much as said so when the DS was announced.
The original Game Boy was released in the U.S. in 1991. All of the modifications to that unit [Game Boy Color, Pocket Game Boy, etc.] were not forced upgrades because they still played the same games. Your Game Boy purchased in 1991, played the same games.
Now, the GBA was released in 2001. Again, the SP is not a forced hardware upgrade because the GBA SP plays the same games as the GBA. The DS was released in late 2004. So, the time between releases is quite different than your completely anecdotal discussion. You and your various parties purchased Nintendo products at interesting times. It seems that you and your various parties are very good at buying a system a few months before something new comes out. This leads me to believe that either your perception is off on the whole matter OR you are not properly researching purchases before you make them. For instance, purchasing a GBA SP a few months before the DS is released seems a little pecuiliar. Why not wait for the DS which would play both DS games and GBA games? The DS had certainly been announced "a few months" [my, you've chosen an ambiguous way to catalog time] before the official release so there's really no room to complain about the situation.
Long story short - why don't you compare the time between releases?
THIS ACCOUNT IS OFFICIALLY RETIRED/RETARDED.
Kotaku has the analyst's entire report. Check it out for all the nitty-gritty.