Nintendo: DSi won't immediately replace DS Lite in U.S.

While there's been a fair amount of excitement and buzz over the recently announced, camera-equipped upgrade to Nintendo's best-selling handheld, it seems that the big N doesn't want American gamers to neglect the DSi's older, lensless sibling. In a recent interview with Game|Life, Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo's VP of sales and marketing (and world-renowned snowboarding expert), explained that the DS Lite has "huge, untapped potential" in the U.S. -- potential that the company hopes to tap before replacing the Lite with the new shutterbugish model.

Dunaway explained Nintendo's hopes to bring America's DS Lite sales to a level the company has come accustomed to in Japan, where one in every two households owns the handheld. While the DSi isn't due out in America until "well into 2009", Nintendo hopes to bolster Lite sales by allowing the two versions to "coexist for some period of time". Hey, as long as the DS Lite doesn't go all Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son, we're cool with it.