Nintendo has said recently that it will unveil a new product this spring. They've also said it's "entirely different from anything now existing". Well, you know how marketing speak works, it's probably nothing earth shattering, but it got me thinking about a possible Nintendo product.

Sony is going to be coming out the PSP in a year or so to compete w/ the GBA (even if they say it's not supposed to go head to head w/ GBA). I never liked the idea of Nintendo having another update to GBA, since GBA isn't really that old. However, I had one idea that would change my mind about that.

Nintendo could make a portable system w/ a hard drive built in (think iPod, but much smaller HD, like a Gig), and allow you to download games onto it from the net. And by games I mean NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy, GBA games.

They could make a portable system that can play and store them all on a HD, and make the cost cheap for old games (say $5 and up). They can then contact the original third parties to sign up for them to collect royalties for basically no cost to them. What would a 3rd party have to lose in that deal?

Think of it like the iPod/iTunes Music store model. You can search online for any game for the previous systems, pay a minimal fee, download it, store it on your computer/GBA2, and play it. I mean we're talking thousands of games here, with no production costs. You can use "Fairplay" DRM like Apple uses so that people aren't passing around the downloads to each other.

This also lets devs have the option to write new games for any of these systems and release them (since they're just emulated), instead of just one platform. It also allows Nintendo to really go after the ROM scene since they are actually selling these old ROMs and have legal precidence.

I don't know, to me, this is such a simple yet powerful idea. And Nintendo is the only one who could pull it off, simply because of the history they have in gaming. It gives them an instant leg up on everyone, including Sony with minimal cost to them for the games, and large profits. What's not to like?

Alas, I don't see Nintendo doing this. For as much as I do like thier games, they're just too conservative for this type of idea. Which is unfortunate. I think it'd do really well.