Nintendo's new DS model, dubbed the DSi, is only on sale in Japan at the moment and it'll stay that way until Spring next year according to Nintendo, who are still struggling to meet demand there. While the DSi has only been on sale for two or three days it's already sold out of it's initial 200,000 unit shipment.

That's good news for Nintendo then - though slightly less good is the news that the platform has already been hacked and made to run custom code. Personally, we're just surprised it took so long.

The news comes from DS homebrew site GBATemp who have a video of homebrewer Yasu running a simple 'Hello World!' script on the new DSi already. Yasu is already well known for other homebrew programs he has made for the first DS, including YSmenu.

Running homebrew software is a technically illegal exercise which Nintendo claims costs it millions of pounds every year, mainly because the flashcarts used to normall run such homebrew games are also commonly used to run pirated games and software.

In order to combat this piracy, Nintendo has closed a number of DS security issues with the new DSi and existing flashcarts, including the ever popular M3 and R4, are incompatible with the DSi. Considering that the DSi also has new online functionality over the DS, it's also quite likely that Nintendo will continue to work against homebrew programs remotely.

If all this homebrew related talk is just gobbledy-gook to you then you can check out our introductory Guide to DS homebrew for more information and a few select examples of homebrew games. If you're already a homebrew user though then be sure to let us know what you think of the DSi in the forums.