Speculation is that Nintendo’s upcoming 3DS portable 3D gaming handheld could be powered by Marvell. Marvell co-founder Sehat Sutardja dropped some hints during their quarterly earnings call. He says that Marvell chips will soon be used to power a game console.

“Approximately 15% of the sequential increase (in quarterly sales) was due to the initial production revenue from our ARMADA application processors, primarily as a result of a major customer preparing to launch a new gaming platform,”

So now we have a date on which they will announce the release date for the 3DS. That seems just a tad silly to us. Why do we need a date to announce the date? Just tell us already. Nintendo has revealed that it will be releasing the official Nintendo 3DS date along with pricing details on September 29.

Mighty nice of them. We’re guessing it will be just before Christmas 2010. Then again, it could be as far off as Christmas in 2011.

Ahoy pirates, listen up. Nintendo will be increasing the piracy protection on their latest DS handheld, the Nintendo 3DS over the previous model of the Nintendo DS. According to THQ VP Ian Current, the DS market and especially the DS Lite had been affected by piracy, so they are hoping that the new security will put a stop this.

I’m sure it will slow pirating down, but sooner or later someone will get around it.

When you think of a Nintendo handheld, you rightly think gaming, but the new 3DS might just support reading newspapers and magazines too. Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata has said that the company is looking at ways to automatically beam newspaper and magazine articles to a 3DS handheld.

The 3DS is fully capable of receiving data while in sleep mode, after all. It could automatically connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot, and download the material of your choice. Then again this device still has a small screen and not so great resolution. It will be interesting to see what it can do.

At E3 today, Nintendo has made the 3DS official. The device looks sharp. At least the one they had on stage does. Looks a bit thicker, but we can’t be sure. There’s a 3D Depth Slider on the side to maximize or eliminate the 3D depth effect. The bottom screen is the only touchscreen, just like the original DS, but in this case with a 3.5-inch widescreen on top. There’s a slide pad for analog control and also an accelerometer and a gyroscope.

It sports a camera on the inside and two lenses on the outside for taking 3D photos with the device. But that isn’t it. The Nintendo 3DS is also capable of showing 3D Hollywood movies. The graphics look pretty sweet for a handheld, almost Wii-like.

Official details of the 3D-capable Nintendo 3DS haven’t been officially unveiled just yet, but word on the street is that the portable console will have two different screen designs, a tilt sensor, and will be very powerful. The latest leak suggests that the 3DS could offer users a larger 3D display on top, while the bottom screen will have similar specifications to the original DS’ bottom touchscreen.

There’s also the possibility of a 3D camera that could allow you to take photos and videos that will appear in 3D on the display. Other improvements include a better media player with hardware AAC and MP3 decoding.

An FCC filing submitted by Nintendo and Mitsumi, appears to be for the new Nintendo 3DS handheld. It seems to suggest widescreen portable gaming. The image is likely a testbed for the Nintendo 3DS. The FCC report it showed up in is for its wi-fi system, but those two screens stand out.

The bottom one looks like the existing bottom screen on the Nintendo DS, but that top screen is widescreen. Keep in mind that this is all bound to change. What you see is used for testing. If that is a widescreen on top, then when the 3DS arrives, it will have a matching one below it.

Good news for fans of “backward compatibility”. Nintendo’s new 3DS handheld won’t force you to play in 3D. 3D gameplay can be switched off. The confirmation comes directly from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. So if you experience headaches or nausea, no worries. Just switch it off.

It’s good to have the option. We suspected as much, but now we know for sure. How many times can you see Bowser jump out of the screen anyway? 2D is True-D that’s what I say. Bah-humbug.

The exact details of Nintendo’s upcoming 3DS portable gaming console haven’t been revealed yet of course, but President of Nintendo America, Reggie Fils-Aime, has said that the 3DS will be the biggest handheld launch since the DS in 2004.

With the 3DS they will be able to deliver things to consumers that they could not with the DS. Let’s face it, the DS is nothing next to today’s tech, so they had to up their game with a new handheld, while your Wii also sits collecting dust.