Nintendogs Pummels Sony Products

Gamespot has the news that the hit DS title Nintendogs has allowed the Nintendo DS to pull ahead of the PSP and PS2 consoles for over a month straight. In the week Nintendogs was launched, the DS outsold the PSP and PS2 combined in the nation of Japan. Several weeks after its initial launch, the DS is still outselling the PSP by 5,000-sum units. Those of us in the states still have a little while to wait to see the cuteness firsthand. From the article: "The game is sold in different editions, each housing roughly five types of puppies, from Chihuahuas to Labrador retrievers. As a virtual owner, gamers will pet their pooches using the stylus, order commands through the integrated microphone, and let their canines sniff other gamers' Nintendogs wirelessly. Nintendogs is scheduled to roll over to the US on August 22."

Comments

But who buys it?

[Dogers]

This months Edge has a fact that the Japanese "teeny boppers" control fads out there..

If 5% of them buy it, then another 60% will within a month, or something to that effect!

Re:But who buys it?

[Doomstalk]

That's what we call a killer app. Even if the fad dies away, they've still sold a lot of games and, more importantly, A LOT of hardware. If they've got the system, they're that much more likely to try and get their money's worth by buying more games. Furthermore, it makes the DS that much more appealing of a platform, since it's got a massive installed base. Case and point, look at the original Gameboy: they hooked people with Tetris and (much later) Pokemon, and then from there they just kept buying games. It also proves Nintendo's point about grabbing non-traditional gamers. There's a huge untapped market out there that's willing to try games, but just doesn't like stuff like GTA and Doom 3. If you can grab them, you're poised to make a lot of money - more than you could ever make with just the hardcore gamer crowd, which is miniscule compared to, say, the portion of the population that buys CDs, or goes to movies.

Nintendogs?

[Momoru]

Can they really prove its Nintendogs that is causing this? Maybe just the initial excitement of PSP has worn off (or everyone that wanted one got one), and Nintendo just rose back to the top in the handheld console world.

Re:Nintendogs?

[Zangief]

If you look at the list of the 50 top games, you will see that one of the three Nintendogs titles is number 11. If you combine the sales of the three packs, Nintendogs is number 6 or something.

Fear the power of the poochie!!

Re:Nintendogs?

[DeadScreenSky]

GTA the most american game there is is the most single player game there is.
Um, shouldn't "the most american game" out there at least be made by Americans?

Re:Tomagotchi

[theREALMcCoy]

Apparently, most would disagree with you. The desire to be a virtual care taker, whether of a family unit (Sims), an empire (Civilization), or a Pet drives more game sales than any other genre.

Good to see Nintendo's strategy working

[Andy_R]

While Microsoft and Sony are pouring billions into hardware, which they expect to lead to game sales, Nintendo keep on doing what they always have done, making games their first priority, and hardware second.

Maybe Nintendogs is the next in the line of Pokemon/Zelda/Mario/Tetris, maybe it's not. The point is that Nintendo is putting it's effort into coming up with this stuff while the other 2 players are competing over how many extra polys they can render in their new WW2 FPS game.

I can see Nintendo winning the next gen war by making a good, cheap console with great games that PS3 and Xbox360 owners buy as their second machine.

Re:Good to see Nintendo's strategy working

[Phisbut]

How about a focus group research to see what people outside Japan really want to play.

What I'd actually like to see is more japanese games being released outside of Japan. Japanese game designers have very, very weird ideas (think Katamari), and that's what makes a cool varied set of games. Unfortunately, only a small portion of those games ever get officially distributed out of Japan.

Re:Way to early to call this race

[Daetrin]

But if you're going to do that, why not just get a used GBA SP and save $90?

Because then you wouldn't be able to play DS games _or_ PSP games? If you're looking at it from the perspective of which next-gen handheld to get the presence of GBA games on the DS is motivation to get a DS rather than a PSP, not a motivation to get neither.

Re:Way to early to call this race

[deinol]

This doesn't take into account the quality of any of the games.

And quality is where it really matters. There are a ton more games for the PS2 than the GameCube. But I buy about the same ammount of both. So far, there have been several titles that have tempted me to pick up a DS, but nothing at all to make me even look at the PSP. So often people buy a console for a single game they like, then look around at the others once they have it.

Personally, I like supporting a variety of consoles. Having several big companies vying for my attention means a larger variety of titles for me to choose from.