The Nintendo DS has been going strong since it launched in Japan back at the tail end of 2004 and has quickly become one of the biggest selling consoles in the world ever, rapidly building up towards toppling even the mighty PlayStation 2 from Sony. But to ensure the system remains at the top of its game, could a new version be coming out?

Well, according to reports from Japan itself, Nintendo could indeed have a little something up its sleeve for the videogames industry to sink its teeth into. Just as the Game Boy saw subsequent revisions in the form of the Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Colour, and the Game Boy Advance had both the front-lit SP model, as well as the tiny and amazingly high-performance back-lit Game Boy micro, the boss of Enterbrain, Hirokazu Hamamura, believes a third edition of the Nintendo DS will be unveiled in the near future.

A report came out recently on business website Bloomberg Japan where the head of the company that controls publications such as gaming bible Famitsu magazine stated that he believes Nintendo will draw back the curtain on a brand new revision of the immensely popular portable system. But when? None other than at the revamped Electronic Entertainment Expo in the US in July of this year, when the whole world will be eagerly watching to see all the major players’ new announcements.

To add to the intrigue, when a spokesperson for Nintendo’s Japanese arm was approached for comment, the answer was not quite as clear-cut as some thought it might well be. Hiroshi Yasushi certainly did not deny the rumour, but went on record to tell Famitsu that the company cannot comment at this point. So could the world indeed be seeing a Nintendo DS SP or Nintendo DS micro, or some other equivalent later in the year? And what should be included? Nintendic certainly has its thoughts on the matter and will share them in due course, but for now feel free to share your own speculation in the comments section below.

In other Famitsu-related news, the magazine’s parent company Enterbrain has openly talked about Nintendo’s recent success in the 2007 fiscal software and hardware stakes and made predictions for the next year as well. According to Enterbrain, the Japanese gaming market saw an impressive 3.8 per cent rise over the period of the year, which is great for the Japanese market since it had previously been in constant decline a couple of years back, before the DS was introduced. However, clearly this is nothing in comparison to the meteoric rise over in North America, where the increase was closer to 43 per cent. Unfortunately, Enterbrain now believes that this is indicative of the lack of potential for future expansion of the gaming market in Japan, with software and hardware sales expected to hit a peak of Â¥710.4 billion (roughly US$7 billion) during 2008, but then start to decline once more to around Â¥671.1 billion (roughly US$6.6 billion) by 2010.

The reason behind this train of thought is because Enterbrain thinks that the saturation point is almost upon us, with the public starting to lose interest in the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable purely because those that wanted to systems will have already bought them by 2010. Whilst the contraction of the console sales are seen to be inevitable, the firm does believe than online gaming, something that has yet to take Japan by storm despite having far better online networks than the Western world for a long time now, will most certainly expand considerably, stretching to around ¥320.5 billion (roughly US$3.1 billion) by the same year.

However, perhaps if Nintendo does indeed introduce a new model Nintendo DS, sales could well be extended far beyond current expectations…