Just like the home console wars, the handheld console war has been raging for as long as we can remember. Now BSN is reporting that according to their “confidential sources”, Nvidia has won Nintendo over, and will supply the Japanese video game company with Tegra chipsets to be used in the next iteration of the Nintendo DS.
The current Nintendo DS uses two ARM chips. And as the website reports, Nvidia’s Tegra “System-on-Chip” processor will provide a single chip solution to Nintendo, who are known for liking their hardware “absolutely simple”. Apparently the new chip solution will allow for backward compatibility with all of the games and apps for the old DS.
At this point it is not known what Tegra chip might be used for the next generation of Nintendo’s handheld, but as the BSN website points out, the second generation of Tegra chips are set to debut in February 2010. It doesn’t look like Nintendo is going to announce anything about this right away, but the website expects the next handheld from the company in late 2010.