Nintendo: 'We recently canceled a new handheld' @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on June 03, 2009

News: Also, a price cut for the Wii was denied again.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata recently spoke with CNBC about where the company is headed and let loose with a very interesting piece of information.

It seems that Nintendo had completed development on a new handheld system sometime in the last three years, but canceled it before revealing it to the public. Iwata would not elaborate on whether it was another refresh of the DS (which has been upgraded twice, first as the DS Lite and more recently as the DSi) or if it was the fabled "Game Boy Evolution."

But the most interesting part? This isn't even the first time Nintendo has scrapped finished hardware:

УIn the history of Nintendo, there are several such examples," [Iwata] says. "But when we are launching new hardware, the most important is thing is to sustain the momentum. If introducing new hardware won't do anything to do that, well..."

While the notion that Nintendo has canceled hardware that was complete without revealing them to the public multiple times is a huge surprise, Iwata's comments on the Wii's retail price are not.

Once again, he reiterated that Nintendo has no plans to drop the price on this generation's bestselling system anytime soon:

"Right now, we have no plans at all about a price cut," he says. "We are going to start launching the stronger software in the later half of the year Ч and we are confident [we will] regain the momentum.

We'll have more on all things Nintendo (including all of the games they have on hand at E3 2009) soon.