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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.
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.
No its not a fanboy argument, because you don't know every unit has sold....until it sells. Its quite possible that some portion of the shipments will never be sold and sales of the Sony PSP haven't been exactly fantastic.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
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
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 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, that number is exactly the amount that have been sold to consumers. The article doesn't state it, but the Nintendo press release that the article was written from does:
"It's important to note that these strong figures represent Nintendo hand-held units and games that consumers have purchased and are now enjoying at home or wherever they like to play."
seems like a nice little jab to Sony and their "shipped" figures.
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
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
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.