Say Goodbye to the DS Lite, 22nd April 2011 (1up.com)
The first revision of the DS is being discontinued after almost five years.
With the 3DS coming up on one full month of availability in the United States, a photo purporting to be an internal GameStop document suggests that one of Nintendo's older handheld devices is being discontinued.
The memo says the DS Lite has been discontinued and that GameStop will no longer be receiving any further shipments of the handheld. Stores are being instructed to remove any related promotional boxes once their current stock of Lites has been sold through.
Several NeoGAF posters claim that they have seen the document and can verify it's real. Nintendo itself isn't offering up any comment on the situation.
The DS Lite made its North American debut in June 2006. It was significantly smaller than the original DS model (which came to be known as the DS Phat), offered better battery life, and cost $129.99 in the U.S. at launch -- the price it continues to sell for today.
This doesn't mean Nintendo is completely abandoning the DS line of systems; it still has both the DSi and DSi XL iterations of the system that will continue to be sold. Nintendo said way back in 2008 that it believed it could continue to sell the DS Lite even after the DSi launched, and given how long the Lite has been available for, it clearly was able to. The discontinuation of the Lite provides Nintendo with some additional room to drop the prices of the two handhelds which currently retail for $149.99 and $169.99, respectively.
Source: Solidus (via GoNintendo)