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.

Comments

Journalism

[mypalmike]

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

DS simply has better games than the competition

[leather_helmet]

...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...

Re:As opposed to shipped

[dogbowl]

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.

Battle-mode = lag-sensitive

[MS-06FZ]

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.