Exclusive: Nintendo poised to pack Game Boy Advance in DVD cases

We have learned that Nintendo is poised to roll out a new packaging program for Game Boy Advance. In what has to be seen as a significant demographic shift, DVD packaging is about to be deployed for the next batch of titles, for both first and third party games.

The new packaging will hit shelves in Europe and the US in time for this Christmas, with a feasibility study currently underway in Japan.

The new casing, pioneered with the GameCube Game Boy Player, is not expected to alter the already prohibitive price that publishers currently pay Nintendo to release games for its market-dominating portable.

And that’s about all we can tell you at the moment. Nintendo has for a long time stuck to its re-sell-unfriendly cardboard packaging, with the GameCube marking a shift in its strategy, at least outside of Japan. DVD cases are of course much more consumer friendly, and are likely to inspire a great collector following, given that they look much better on the shelf than the hotchpotch of non-uniform boxes currently housing the cartridges.

We’ll bring you the first scans of the new games as soon as we can.