When the DSi specs were first revealed in front of the Nintendo money vault this past October, we noticed the battery life of the DS line went from "pretty awesome" to "WTF?" The brighter, larger screens were initially blamed for the 1-6 hour drop, but a field stripped DSi we discovered today hints the drain might be due to a beefier processor and speakers housed within.

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We didn't quite get the DSi's bundled Camera editing software—exactly what's the point of stretching a body part with lame animations—and then we watched this semi NSFW clip. I'm not saying that we "get it" now, but we're certainly a few steps closer to penetrating the unique design minds of Nintendo engineers.

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While Nintendo may have sealed out DS piracy tools from use on the DSi, according to this humble YouTube clip, one Japanese hacker may have already wormed his way into the system, loading his own code despite security measures. (Unfortunately, he did not share his methods.) So while we could still be a long way from loading emulators and DS games at will, it's certainly not a bad sign when a new system gets cracked open within 3 days of its release. [GBAtemp]

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We pretty much figured that Nintendo had another reason for releasing the DSi other than just wanting to give us a prettier system like, say, wanting to stop rampant global piracy on the DS. Now that the DSi is out in Japan, the public has tested all of the flash card piracy devices and found the results to be very, very bad. None of them work.

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The dual-camera DSi hits in Japan tomorrow, but thankfully, it seems that we occidents won't have to wait until "well into 2009" as originally thought. Nintendo pres. Satoru Iwata told Reuters that a fall or Christmas '09 release would likely be too late. Which leaves Summer or even before as the new launch window. Get your cat ready to be photographed now. [Reuters via Kotaku]

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Games that already play well with the DS could run into trouble on the DSi, causing many a developer headache, according to sources at Pocket Gamer. One unnamed developer told the publication that its studio is having problems getting one of its upcoming games compatible with the Dsi's new hardware. Though the game plays fine on the regular DS, it freezes up when played on the Dsi and so Nintendo won't certify it.

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