There's always room for improvement.

The Nintendo DS and the re-designed DS lite are both fantastic pieces of kit. It could be considered by many as a "test-run" by Nintendo, to see whether the market would take kindly to this sort of innovation. Whilst it features dual screens, a touch screen and microphone, there are still areas for improvement in terms of a more graphical user interface, such as the Wii Channels, or better use of WiFi facilities.

Next-Gen.biz have created a lovely little article in which they suggest one or two things that could be done to improve the system. The DS and lite are flying off the shelves as it is, but with further development, it could really become the handheld of people's hearts.

Here is what they have suggested:

Internal Memory

Like the Wii houses flash memory, the DS would benefit from having something similar. You can download demos from other games in RAM, but once the system is turned off that information is gone. Flash memory would expand the possibilities for downloadable content.

Improve the system interface

The DS is a very innovative piece of hardware, so why is the main user interface so drab and uninspired? Something like the sleekness of the Wii Channels would definitely be a huge hit with gamers. The ability to return to a home menu and access many things from there. One annoying feature of the DS is that the system shuts down once you enter and leave pictochat or the options menus. Why doesn't it just take you back to the main interface? It's decent, but we want more.

Expandable Interface

Imagine being able to add channel-like features to the DS. An expandable interface, an interface that grows as the system matures. Right now, the DS just has software applications, whilst the Wii has features like the Virtual Console, Photo Channel, News and Weather Channels, and with the opportunity that more will be on the way. Something similar on the DS would be fantastic.

A Virtual Console

This is the big one! The DS is the ideal system to feature past-games, classics if you will. Imagine being able to download an old SNES classic via WiFi and then save the game to the internal memory (which we discussed earlier), so you would be able to play older games on the go. The Wii's Virtual Console is really flourishing at the moment, and it would be a wise move if you could somehow download these games to the DS for portable use. Seems like Nintendo missed a trick with this one.

We have re-written all this in our own words, but we used the headings from Next-gen.biz as the starting point. If you'd like to read what they wrote in their own words, visit here