Nintendo today posted the latest Nintendo DSi themed volume of Iwata Asks. In last week's chat, the company president Satoru Iwata talked with members of the hardware team. In today's edition, Satoru Iwata throws questions towards the software team: Tomoaki Kuroume, Yoshihiro Matsushima, and Masahiro Imaizumi of the Software Development and Design department, as well as Shigeru Miyamoto and Yusuke Akifusa were on-hand to talk all about the features of the Nintendo DSi system.

Kuroume's task was to bring new elements to the Nintendo DSi system. Both he and Matsushima worked on the Wii console and took their experiences to produce a friendly menu system for DSi. Matsushima felt that it was important that users understand the new items right away, so many of the features had to represent the camera, the SD card slot, and internal memory right away and make them easy to understand to the users.

One of the first ideas to get the axe was the ability to make video calls between DSi systems using the cameras, a concept that was weeded out to ensure that the system would make its original release date.

Imaizumi stepped up to the plate as the director of the Nintendo DSi camera applications and came up the concept of a digital camera you could play with. There are a total of 11 different ways to play with the camera, including the distortion lens, where you can bend subjects out of shape, and the graffiti lens where you can write and stamp on the images. Since there were a lot of women on his team, they came up with a lot of stamps, frames and other frills that would be considered "cute."

Miyamoto wasn't deeply involved in the development of Nintendo DSi, but he did insist that art tools and a graphic editor should be included. He figured that it would be good if there are enough elements to fiddle around with. For a time he believed that cell phone texting was beating out videogaming as a time killer, so he wants everyone to walk around with a DSi and use it to kill time on the train by editing pictures and sending them to friends.

Miyamoto also suggested that music playback should be a feature that's in right from the start and not added in after launch. Developers of the system were running low on time, but Iwata agreed with Miyamoto after the producer suggested features such as manipulating the pitch and playback speed using the stylus. The sound tools were added at the tail end of the DSi development, but the reason why it's so full featured is that staff from all over the company lent a hand to put in all the features.

Matsushima also offered up one tidbit of information: PictoChat is now in color on the Nintendo DSi, and the messages will retain the color on the Nintendo DS and DS Lite systems.

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