Recently, the Nikkei business daily has reported that Nintendo Co Ltd, a Japanese video game maker, has planned to launch a new model of its DS handheld machine that can play music and take snaps by the end of the year.

According to the Nikkei, the price for this new Nintendo’s machine that will also be equipped with the most modern and recently developed wireless communications functions is expected to be below 20,000 yen ($189) in Japan, compared with 16,800 yen for the current model.

The Nintendo Wii game console and the Nintendo DS have been Nintendo’s twin growth engines, helping its share price to grow more than three-fold over the past three years. In addition, the Nintendo DS far outsells Sony Corp’s rival machine, the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), globally.

Nevertheless, in Japan, the Sony PSP’s unit sales exceeded the Nintendo DS’s in five consecutive months through July, according to game magazine publisher Enterbrain, in a potential mark of slowing momentum for the current Nintendo DS model.

Nintendo’s move would pit the top-selling portable game gear with Apple Inc iPod and camera-embedded cell phones in general. Nintendo officials were not directly available for comment.

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