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10 Million Nintendo DS Units Sold Since Launch
DS Gamer writes "Nintendo has announced that worldwide sales of their twin-screen handheld console the Nintendo DS have reached the 10 million mark since its launch in the United States during late November 2004. The vast majority of sales have been in the United States (4 million) and Japan (5 million) where the DS became the fastest selling games machine of all time. From the Reuters article: 'It is on the upswing of its life cycle," Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing, told Reuters in a telephone interview. She declined to give a sales forecast but said the Japan-based company would provide additional information during its upcoming quarterly financial report. Kaplan added that Nintendo's seven-week-old Wi-Fi Connection wireless gaming service has had more than 550,000 unique visitors globally.'" Commentary is available on Forbes and Gamespot.
It's good to see them stating sales rather than shipments, unlike Sony, which likes to brag about how many units have been shipped out of their factories but not about how many have actually left the store. That said, I'm a big Nintendo fan, and even I feel inclined to take these numbers as being slightly exagerated, if only by rounding up. Still, this is very, very nice to hear. Perhaps there is room in this industry for innovation after all.
That's 20 million screens!
And I'll bet 30 million lost styl-i by now...
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Free, with a game that supports it.
Official Site
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
For my money, the Nintendo DS has had the best signal to noise ratio, with regards to the quality of the games, of any system in its first year since the Dreamcast. Probably even better. I've been absolutely astonished at how often I keep coming back to this little guy, especially considering how dismal it was at launch. The games are really coming at a good pace now...it is hard for a guy with a WoW addiction to keep up.
I got a DS for Christmas, and I've been very very happy with it.
When it first came out, I wasn't really interested in it... the dual screens seemed like they were pointless, and I didn't think a touch screen would work well in games.
Well, after playing Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for a few weeks, as well as Mario Kart, Animal Crossing and Nintendogs, I'm sold... Nintendo knew what they were doing. The game developers are really taking advantage of what Nintendo offered them. I never thought having two screens would be so convenient.
And the future looks bright for the DS in the area of upcoming games...
In addition, the number of amazing games for the DS gives me great hope for the Revolution. Nintendo is doing something different again, and the fact that so many developers (not just Nintendo) have embraced the hardware of the DS leads me to believe they'll do the same for the Revolution and its controller.
I got a DS for Christmas, and while the system is great (I've been playing Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, good game, at least as good as the last Mario and Luigi), I was disappointed that there was no wi-fi connectivity outside of games. I mean, if the games connect to my wireless router and hotspots anyway, how hard would it have been to include a wireless browser in the interface outside of games?
I've heard about people trying to reverse engineer the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection so that this is possible, but I really think they should have included this in the first place. It would have had so many uses.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
You know, kinda like what happened with these handhelds. =)
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
There's a reason the Gamecube hasn't been selling well... no good new games for it!
I enjoy my Gamecube more than my PS2 and Xbox, but even I'll admit that the support for the GC has been dwindling... really the only game on the horizon that looks promising is Zelda.
And, the Revolution will be coming out hopefully within a few months of Zelda for the GC... the GC is near the end of its life, there's a reason why sales are starting to slow.
definitely free as long as you can pick up the wi-fi. apparently my sister lives near someone (or place) that has wi-fi, my daughter and my niece use it in their house all the time....
And yet I can't find a single person over the age of 18 that has one. Other than... me...
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Forbes:
"With more than five million units sold in Japan since its December 2004 regional launch, the DS has become the fastest-selling gaming machine in the country's history. Japanese gamers have also bought more than a million copies of four different titles within one year of the system's launch: Nintendogs--a game where users play with, train, pet, and wash a virtual dog, Animal Crossing, Wild World, Brain Age, and Brain Flex."
- Chris Noon
Gamespot:
"With more than 5 million units sold in Japan since its December 2004 regional launch, the DS has become the fastest-selling gaming machine in Japan's history. In another first, Japanese gamers have scooped up more than a million copies of four different titles within one year of a system's launch: Nintendogs, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Brain Age, and Brain Flex."
- Tim Surette
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
...And better developer support
I have developed games for the GBA, DS & have access to a PSP dev kit for which we have not developed a game yet
From the development point of view, NOA is a lot easier to deal with throughout the whole process (concept submission, feedback, testing & final approval) - Sony on the other hand almost makes the developer feel like they are doing them a favor by letting them develop for the PSP - the whole process is overly convoluted and a major pain in the ass...
I think Game Boys are illegal in Greece
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956357.html
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I almost picked it up until I heard that you could only race, no battle mode over WiFi.
That was definitely a "WTF were they thinking?" moment.
You're right, it's probably less important with console hardware than software. But still, going by sell-through numbers is important. It prevents channel stuffing, for starters. You can stuff the channel (load up retailers with equipment) at the end of quarters so as to bring next quarters sales into this quarter. When you do this, it creates a misleading impression, especially because next quarter's true sales can't even begin until you sell off last quarter's stuffed stock.
Sometimes companies have been known to stuff the channel and take the product back in the next quarter! It's just a scam. Going by sell-through eliminates this.
Additionally note that going by shipped units also makes it possible to do other shenanigans like add new retailers to "increase sales". If you add a new retailer, you can count their shipments to fill inventory as sales, even if the units never sell at all. So you can again manipulate sales numbers, or at least the timing of them.
Additionally, you can update your model to get more sales (shipments). If they announced the new PSP with 802.11g or 15% longer battery life or something, they could make it a new model, and the retailers all have to order the new one to put it on the shelves, even if the old ones never sold. Eventually retailers do get tired of this, but they can do it occasionally to jump up the numbers.
Given that the name of the game in video games is to get an installed base out there to attract developers and make royalties from software sold, all these tricks can make the difference between success and failure for a console and so are likely employed by every company to varying degrees.
So it's great to be able to try to null those tricks out as much as possible. For example, with the Xbox 360 launch in Japan.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
"WEP Key is a security setting for your router. WEP is the only security that is compatible with the Nintendo DS Wi-Fi Connection. You will need to set your router for WEP security -- or remove security on your router -- to use the Nintendo DS at this access point." Nintendo
I wish they supported WPA. WEP sucks and no security is not a good option for home use.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Here in Japan (Nagoya), I see DSes everywhere. Toy stores and department stores have big DS (and Gameboy) sections, but I've yet to notice any PSPs, though I suppose they must be tucked away somewhere. I also see a lot of kids carrying around DSes, but again, I've never even seen a PSP here. I did see a PSP subway ad once.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
No battle mode over the internet, but there's still battle mode for local adhoc connections.
Erm. Huh?
..
You have developed for NDS and GBA but not PSP, and are saying the PSP development cycle is difficult. what the?
Having developed on both, and knowing many coders who have developed on both, the general consensus is that Nintendos support is horrendous. Their devkits - erm.. half assed at best (did you even have a GBA Nintendo devkit? - they are slower to use than the USB Carts!!!). And the NDS systems are really no better. Then if you want to talk about features the DS and GBA are sorely missing many many things that devvers have been asking to put on their ARM chips for YEARS!!.. an FPU for example - if you are a Nintendo developer, visit their forums, and read the _huge_ list of people asking for this (btw ARM chips with FPU are not much costlier either!!).
Then there is the VRAM issues, the DMA issues.. man.. talk about a complete mess. And everyone thought theyd clean it up with the DS.. bzzzt. Even the damn 3D is an utter pain.. two sets of normals?? come on!! After spending a single day devving on PSP.. I was hooked. We ported our code in just a couple of days.. and the huge amount of extra resources we now have, means our systems can have many extra features added.. how the heck can you say that is bad?
Console.. and handheld wise, the DS is a horrible dinosaur of hardware (dont get me started on IPC..) and shows how much Nintendo listen to their developers. Also, since I changed my IDE to code::blocks (I develop PC, PSP, DS all from the one IDE now.. its nice) I dont have to deal with the el-stupido metrowerks anymore (although I did like their debugger.. but their IDE sucks to hell).
As for submission and feedback etc.. I really dont think you have done many games before at all. Nintendo simply give you a tick or a cross, if you pass or fail. With a nice doc explaining.. what silly bit of crap they didnt like. Sony are NO different in their QA.. its exactly the same.. detailed report.. about some obscure text siting in the wrong spot.
Also, you NEVER submit concept submissions to Nintnedo unless you are a tier 1 developer - which is a handfull of the top of the line developers, and they actually get to write their own rules for QA.. I have seen so many breeches of the QA docs in the 1st tier games.. but its because they can. As a 3rd party developer, you go through a publisher, and guess what, you dont deal with Nintendo at all, or Sony. You simply get their reports and thats it. The publisher does all the submission, feedback, testing and approvals with Nintendo.
The first thing I thought of when you said that was the headline: Outraged parents demand parental controls. Think about this for a second? You are taking a gaming machine that you can trust your kids to drive around and jump on evil snails to kill them and opening up the potential for anything- porn, news, viruses, scripting, java, etc. Why would you do that as Nintendo? It's a parental control nightmare and a security nightmare.
The second argument is why would you go outside its intended purpose? It's a gaming handheld machine with a few buttons and a touch-screen. You'd have be bring in typing (keyboard) for URLs, viewing of various image formats, scripting, and other joyous necessities (ever tried turning off javascript and surfing... you won't get far). If someone wants the web, they have a cell phone and a computer.
If I recall correctly, isn't chat built in though?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Something that a lot of people missed when the DS and PSP were introduced, was the price point.
Taking a look at Argos (major UK retailer, the kind of place many people buy these things from)...
* PSP : 180GBP
* Nintendo DS : 90GBP
PSP games start at 30GBP and go up to 35. DS games start at 15 and go up to 30.
The DS is not selling to the kind of people who will put down 200quid for a graphics card just to play the latest blood-fest, it sells to the huge number of casual gamers who want something fun. For the price of a PSP you can buy a DS and three games.
The DS also sells to parents buying presents and I imagine it did a hell of a lot better over christmas than the PSP.
This is exactly what happened with the original gameboy. When I was a kid I, and most of my friends had gameboys. They may not have been colour like the Sega Gamegear or Atari Lynx, but our parents could afford them, the batteries lasted an age, and the games were fantastic. Colour would have been great, but it wasn't worth the money (and the power drain)
Sheer brute force power is not everything when it comes to these sorts of machines. Nintendo understands this. The handheld market is not just a portable version of the mainstream. It is a whole other beast.
Paul Leader
Most likely they didn't want to do battle mode over IP because it'd be a lot more sensitive to lag issues than race mode.
Consider: there's not -too- much in race mode that matters, apart from whether your opponent is in front of you, or behind. If you see lag in race mode, most likely it'll mean your opponent's position jumps around (or even that they fall off the track, and mysteriously reappear on it without losing time) - but at a very basic level, the needs of the race are met, in that the relationship between how long it's taking you to get around the track, and how long it's taking them to get around the track is maintained. Every time you get a sync packet from an opponent everything's right with the world again. As for powerups, usually in race mode if you're in a position where you can effectively use a powerup, it won't be too sensitive to lag unless the two players are really right on top of each other. (Drafting doesn't work too well in a laggy game, of course, and in that situation it's tough to say whether a banana peel or other weapon dropped behind the lead player will hit the trailing player...) I guess you could say that while powerups still work in a laggy game, the "combat" aspects of the race mode are those which suffer the most from the lag.
Battle-mode is, of course, completely combat-oriented. The game isn't oriented around a circuit in which there is an "ahead" and "behind", rather everyone's free to race around and try to fire weapons at each other. It could still work but given that the relationship between players' positions is much less consistent than in a race, and since the entire battle game revolves around powerups and direct kart-to-kart interactions, it would be harder to give a good battle game experience than it is to give a good race experience.
I love the online race mode, too - it's sort of frustrating sometimes that you can't communicate with your opponents over the link, but other times it's not. It keeps people focused on the game itself rather than all the bickering that often goes with other online games in between rounds. I'm glad they allow the custom emblems, though - it gives people who want to be a jackass an opportunity to do so, but also allows personalization. Really, though, given the potential for abuse I'm surprised they did it at all.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Not really. Japan had at least two major hits (the brain training games) that haven't yet hit the US. Those drove hardware sales a lot, and they nailed a new demographic (adult casual gamer) that neither the PSP nor the DS have really done much for yet in the States. That might change when the brain training games are released here this year, and it might not - depends on how well they translate, I suppose. (I seem to remember that at least some parts of them involved drawing/memorizing kanji, which wouldn't appeal much to the US crowd).
--- Bwah?
I will buy DS if it is not that ugly...
... Let me make a wild guess here. You were a Backstreet Boys fan. Their earlier stuff moved you... you laughed, you cried. Yet, as the years went by and as their popularity grew, your love for them cooled. Was their work compromised by fame or money? You weren't quite sure... but you were ready to move on, and weren't going to wait to find out.
Now, you're a Black Eyed Peas fan, and you're not looking back.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
I do know a lot of people in their 30s who also own a DS, and they bought it from word of mouth and actually having played one. Hopefully the way the DS is selling is a preview of what is to come with the Revolution. I look at the PSP and XBox360 and I just am not excited. Sure, they have some amazing hardware. Blazing processors, awesome widescreen goodness. But the games... The gameplay.. It's just the same thing in a newer package. With the DS i'm drawing jumps for Kirby to launch off of to finish the level! I'm drawing spirals to have him avoid being hit! I haven't had this much fun since the 2600.