Second Coming of the DS Lite

DS News writes "Gamespot has posted news that the release of the Enamel Navy and Ice Blue has been just as much a sell-out success as the White DS Lite event a week ago. From the article: 'Following last week's launch of the Crystal While DS Lite, Nintendo Co, Ltd. shipped its Ice Blue and Enamel Navy models today in Japan. Considering that the handheld has already made one debut, the industry wasn't expecting the same high turnout for these new models. But contrary to conventional wisdom, the machine's second launch drew even more demand than the first.'" As with the White launch, Kotaku has a man on the ground with impressions from the Japanese launch day.

Comments

Japan's Handheld War

[ClamIAm]

Given the popularity of the DS and PSP in Japan (check the hardware sales, they're both on top), and also how Japanese gamers go ga-ga over new colors and such with hardware, I think we'll see some interesting things in the future. Now if they'd only start selling the Lite in the US!

Re:Japan's Handheld War

[chrismcdirty]

This is just speculation, but I would assume that the DS Lite would go state-side along with the new Super Mario Bros. game [Week 1 or 2 in May]. What better way to promote your restyled system than with a game that should be familiar to around 90% of gamers?

Size?

[/ASCII]

My interpretation of the huge interest in the DS Lite is that the claims about how the size of the Xbox and Xbox 360 are a major factor in the horrible sales of those systems in Japan are true. If people really go this crazy over a smaller version of an old system - twice - then size really must be critical over there. I guess it might not be a question of xenophobia after all...

visit IGN instead

[Anonymous Coward]

IGN has a much better write up, with better photos: http://ds.ign.com/articles/695/695157p1.html

OK, but what about America?

[Anonymous Coward]

The DS has consistently been a runaway hit for a really long time in Japan-- it's been the best-selling video game system there for many months. It is no surprise at all the DS Lite has done well, and only a tiny surprise it has done this well.

The question is, how will the DS Lite do when it is released in America? The DS is popular here, but not that popular, there are fewer DS games here than in Japan and the games have been less successful. Will Nintendo find a way to make the DS Lite catch on in some kind of special way with the American public, or will it just sell extra briskly for two weeks after which point retailers will go back to forgetting the DS exists so they can try to push more overpriced UMD movies?

And for those of us who just bought the normal DS

[Captain Spam]

I'd probably be more interested in this whole shebang if I didn't JUST get a bloody normal DS a month or two ago. And even that was stalling for a better deal. "Hey, I want to get hold of a DS and Mario Kart DS", I said to a friend. "Well, wait a month or two, they're releasing a package deal with the system and the game", he tells me.

My question is, is there going to be any sort of trade-in deal? That might be kind of tricky, of course, given each DS seems to have an ID on it which WFC games and friend codes are bound to (the specific game and the specific console are treated as a single "unit", the instructions say). But I know I'm not dropping another however-many dollars on another iteration of a console I JUST got done buying a bit ago.