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Quantifying the DS Lite's Japanese Dominance
kukyfrope writes "According to the data trackers at Media Create, for the week of May 29th through June 4th the DS Lite sold 135,614 units in Japan, easily beating out the PSP (24,595 units), PS2 (18,513 units) and Xbox 360 (just 1,245 units). New Super Mario Bros. for DS also sold 334,208 units, putting total sales at about 1.2 million, in just 2 weeks. 'From the end of last year up until right now the sales of DS and DS Lite in Japan have been simply explosive. It was unprecedented in the Japanese game [industry] history for there to be that kind of incredible demand for one platform,' said Nintendo President Satoru Iwata."
Everything I've heard from Japanese sales figures indicates the Xbox 360 is doing absolutely abysmal. Selling only 1245 units doesn't sound surprising at all when compared with similar numbers for their launch sales figures in japan. Also, consider that the majority of 360 games available are made for a US market. They have maybe 2 or 3 japanese only games available right now from what I've heard, with more on the way, but nothing that... overseas anyway, is a deal-maker. -TR
You heard wrong, badly wrong. The 360 was outsold by the original Xbox within a week or 2 of release. I'm not 100% certain it even beat the original xbox on week one.
As for DS vs PSP- be very careful. Sony only reports units shipped- the number of units sent to stores. Nintendo reports sales, the number of units in customer hands. Sony is claiming 16 million shipped, Nintendo is at 16 million sales, which probably puts the DS well ahead in actual sales. I personally don't know anyone with a PSP, but I know several people with DSes. COme to think of it, I don't think I've even seen a PSP outside of a store.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
You must have learned how the 360 is doing in Japan in the same place I did... various comments on slashdot with no references or facts!! Only I heard the opposite, the 360 is selling less than the original XBOX.
You know Nintendo must be doing something right if a REMAKE of the DS is selling like hotcakes. Hopefully this continues on with the Wii, forcing Sony to actually do something interesting for their PS4.
BTW... I want one, but since I already have the red Mario Kart DS... I'll wait for other colors first.
I have owned every game boy model released in the US except for the Micro and I totally get why the DS Lite has sold so well. I just bought one two or three days ago to replace my DS (which worked fine).
Let's ignore that it's smaller, sexier, fixes the top-heavy problem, etc. There is only one thing that matters about the DS above all else...
The screen is amazing.
It's on par with the PSP for clarity (although I realize the resolution is lower). It is an AMAZING step up. It's like going from the original GameBoy to the Pocket. Remember playing a GB after the pocket? It looked so muddy and blurry and such you wondered how you could ever use the thing. The difference with the Lite is just night and day. The lowest brightness setting is about equivalent to the what the DS looks like. But with the settings on the Lite you can play anywhere. Is it dark? You can see great on the lowest setting. Out in the sun? You can see great on the highest setting. It's possible to play the DS Lite outside on sunny days in the shade, where the DS was basically unplayable there.
But it gets BETTER. It's so much sharper and crisper (partially due to the brighter backlight, I'd think). I've been playing Trauma Center and it looks like a different game. I wish I hadn't sold so many of my DS games so I could stick them in to see just how much better they look. It's an AMAZING difference.
People complain about Nintendo doing things like this because "it's the same system", but the difference is night and day. I dare anyone to look at both and like the DS's screen over the Lite's. About the only way I could see you complaining about the Lite is the buttons (they have a different feel and if you had large hands I could see it being uncomfortable).
The thing is selling that well for a reason. It's just that good.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I have a DS, my wife has a DS (though - only to play Animal Crossing), my nieces, nephews and both brother-in-law's have DSs. I only know two people personally who own PSPs and I have only seen a handful of other PSPs "in the wild."
I'm not a fanboy by any respect but the DS has the games. Maybe the PSP has more games now, I don't know... don't really follow it. Last big deal was GTA for the PSP.. everyone raved and then I didn't hear anything else about it. I assume more good games have been developed though like I said, I don't follow it. The PSP's big deal is homebrew, which the DS is lacking. Hopefully more people will develop for the DS since Nintendo doesn't seem to care if you flash your DS.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
Question of curiosity: When Sony counts shipped, has Sony been paid for those, or would they have to take them back and credit the distributors if they did not sell?
I haven't seen a DS outside of a store either other than one friend who has one.
For a handheld that is about 100 dollars more expensive that is a pretty close race if you estimate it somewhere in the 16 million DS vs ~13-14 million PSPs sold.
The stuff Sony has planned for PS3 PSP integration sounds very cool and will probably get me to buy a PSP. I wish the PSP would fit more easily in one hand and function like an iPod though. Some sort of PSP/iPod/Cellphone would be the ultimate.
Playing my friends DS is a lot of fun every once in a while, but I don't know if the games are anything I would want to invest in to play all the time.
"You heard wrong, badly wrong. The 360 was outsold by the original Xbox within a week or 2 of release. I'm not 100% certain it even beat the original xbox on week one."
Yes, the 360 still hasn't sold through its initial 150k shipment to Japan. I think they are only up to around 130k or so last time I checked. Sales have been slowing declining for the 360 in Japan, so I don't know if the system will ever actually make it through the initial batch.
The 360 is doing about half the rate of the first Xbox in the US and Europe. It is around 2 million worldwide right now. There was a huge drop in demand this past month. If that trend down continues next month Microsoft is going to be forced to go for a large price cut or they are in danger of having publishers start pulling titles from the system.
It'd be appreciated if you didn't pretend the amazing improvements to the screens and battery life didn't exist. These, Ifeel, are much more important than the size change. Your comment is misleading if you mention a not-as-important (in my opinion) feature and ignore the best feature- the screens.
Lots, I'm sure. I know I will.
You missed the biggest reason -- the screen on the Lite is much brighter and can even be set to different levels of brightness. If you try to use the original DS outside it's often surprising how dim the screen is.
Besides, the original DS really is too big; most people don't realize this but it is bigger by volume than the PSP. This really limits where I can take mine.
Of course, don't miss out on the fact that once I replace my original DS with the Lite, I won't throw the original in the trash. I'll probably give it to someone I know or sell it; either way the total number of DS systems will increase.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Using the PSP as a mirror for Ridge Racer?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Here are the figures. Seem fairly official.
http://www.gamegossip.com/comment.php?id=17452
There's that, but there is also a whole new segment of usually non-gamers buying DS Lites to play the non-gamers games (such as Brain Age, Nintendogs or Animal Crossing). This is supported by the fact that, on the opening of the stores for the launch of the DS Lite (on launch day and all) you could find women and elders heavily represented, while these launch-day queues are usually filled only with "young" (15-30) men.
I haven't seen numbers, but I've seen some pictures when the DS:L launched and quite a lot of reports on that.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
M$ only invested about $20 in advertising the system in Japan.
So the Xbox 360 lounge was what, about $15 of that?
Unlike the US
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
But they'd probably sell their original DS to a place that sells used ones (since such stores were offering a lot for them, although with the DS lite being out the offer price has probably decreased a little), and someone else probably bought that DS used, meaning that the sale of the DS lite unit did increase the installed base.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
Fixed that up for ya.
Some sort of PSP/iPod/Cellphone would be the ultimate.
Yes, because the nGage did so well. You may be an exception, but most people don't want an all in one uber convergence device.
Playing my friends DS is a lot of fun every once in a while, but I don't know if the games are anything I would want to invest in to play all the time.
Mario Kart DS, Metroid Pinball, Advance Wars, Trauma Center- all pretty good. Does the PSP have any games other than poor PS1 ports (which for the most part I didn't want to play on the PS1) and Lumies yet?
As for PSP/PS3 integration- it sounds really ficking lame to me. Pay $600, and you then have to pay another $200 for a PSP to get all the features? No thanks. And I'm sure Nintendo will do the same, they invented the idea with the gameboy.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
As I understand, they will take some units back from overstocked retailers, then shipping the unit to someone else. This counts as 2 shipped. Potentially, you could have 20 million manufactured and 25 million shipped.
I've heard of retailers being purposely overstocked by software vendors for the same purpose. I don't know if Sony does the same, but I'm sure they have the means to do so. It's called channel stuffing.
Well, the article is talking about the Japanese market, not the American.
It's like saying that GSM1900 doesn't do well in Europe.
Japan has its customs and traditions, and usually products made by Japanese companies sell much better than imported goods.
Does the PSP have any games other than poor PS1 ports (which for the most part I didn't want to play on the PS1) and Lumies yet?
Yes. Yes it does.
I think the DS Lite kicks ass, but the PSP also has some very cool games. Liberty City Stories alone makes it worth getting, if you like the GTA series.
(Warning: Play it with headphones if you are out in public. The language in that game would make the cast of The Sopranos blush.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
When I see 4 girls in a movie theatre, before the show starting, laughing and giggling out loud with a DS in each of their hands playing a multiplayer game wirelessly, Nintendo has done something right.
When I see a mom and her 5 year old daughter (well she looked around that age), playing with their DSes wirelessly together, obviously Nintendo has done something right.
The nGage was a spectacular failure because it was a piece of crap. You had to take the battery out to change the game cart. People don't mind convergence devices - Treos are selling pretty well from my understanding - they just don't want shitty products. That shouldn't be real surprising. Unfortunately, by their nature, convergence devices are more likely to be shitty products than normal. One day someone will build a good phone/ipod/gameboy and people will buy them by the basketfull.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
The best place to get accurate #'s on Japanese hardware sales is Games Are Fun. They get their data through Fumitsu (if I recall) and then show it off on the site. Wow, a /. first showing proof.
be-fan, is that you?
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
If you think the PSP is a protable PS2, you've drunk the Kool-aid. Its nowhere near the power of a PS2. Hell, it has battery issues trying ot be a PS1.
$500 for a PS3 and a PSP? THe low end crappy PS3 alone is $500. Put the crack pipe down.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Okay, I'm not going to be able to mod this discussion now, but...I'm compelled to respond.
I've worked in distribution centers and I can tell you this much: Wal-Mart makes it a condition of buying that they can return items for credit. If you don't agree, you don't get your product on Wal-Mart's shelves. Since they're the single largest retailer in the world, they drive the market. They set the standards, so to speak.
I would expect (because it's just common practice in the industry) most retailers are able to return unsold units for credit. That's just the way it works.
Which is why companies who always report shipped units are being a bit disengenuous at best. Units sold to consumers are the real indicator of a product's success...if they people aren't buying, the retailers aren't re-ordering.
When I was in Japan in April, I had to walk all over Akihabara to track down a copy of "Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" for the PSP. Everybody had ordered a bunch of copies, but nobody could keep it in stock. I also saw a bunch of people on the JR Line with their noses burried in PSP systems.
Obviously the PSP is doing better over there than the Nintendo fanboys would have you believe.
Over here, my brother, myself, and one other person are the only PSP owners I know of. The DS seems to be a bit more popular, and that will probably be even more the case once people start snapping up the DS-Line.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Advance Wars - no better than my GBA version
It's a bit better, with some new strategies (dual screen battles, dual strike powers)... and I already beat Advance Wars, so Dual Strike was a welcome game for me!
I'd also recommend New Super Mario Brothers (it's great!) and Age of Empires for the DS...
I have yet to find a PSP game I'm interested in enough to justify buying it. The GTA game has gotten lukewarm reviews and, honestly, I'm pretty GTAed out. I hope GTA4 adds some cool new dimensions to the experience, because I've played GTA3 3 times now if you count LC and SA.
Wow, I didn't realize that it was out for the PS2, for $20? I may have to get that. I'm kinda tired of the GTA games, but $20 is cheap...
I'm never seen a debate handled with such skill. My hat is off to you, sir. Your masterful use of collectives communicated an undeserved condescension in ways I've never dreamed of seeing. I bow to you in amazement.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Here is the wrap up of last weeks games sold in the US.
Where are you getting these figures? There is no central US game sales figures that I know off... most sites use either figures from best buy or ebgames, or amazon... all of which are useful, but none are really comprehensive.
They get it from Media Create, the same source used in this very article.
The PSP is doing better here, by all accounts, than in Japan.
Some hard #s:
May 29 - Jun 4, 2006
System - Units Sold - Total Sold (Current Year)
Nintendo DS Lite - 135,614 - 2,056,107
PSP - 24,595 - 823,958
PlayStation 2 - 18,513 - 671,928
GameBoy Advance SP - 4,364 - 150,734
GameBoy Micro - 1,270 - 97,487
Xbox 360 - 1,245 - 51,488
Nintendo DS - 1,159 - 868,537
GameCube - 798 - 51,374
GameBoy Advance - 30 - 2,747
Xbox - 43 - 1,523
As you can see, the DS + DS Lite has sold (this year so far) about 3 and a half times the amount of PSPs sold. While the PSP is indeed a high selling handheld, the DS is a phenomenon. It was sold out for several weeks earlier in the year, a nintendo first.
If you look at current game charts (also on that same link from above), you will see some interesting numbers as well:
1 New Super Mario Bros. Nintendo NDS
2 Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu Nintendo NDS
3 Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju no Nouo Nintendo NDS
4 Metroid Prime: Hunters Nintendo NDS
5 World Soccer Winning Eleven 10 Konami PS2
6 Tetris DS Nintendo NDS
7 Animal Crossing: Wild World Nintendo NDS
8 Eigoga Nigatena Otona no Nintendo NDS
9 Jikkyou Powerful Major League Konami PS2 SPT
10 Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy Square Enix PSP
7 of the top 10 Japanese games are for the NDS. 2 are for the PS2. And 1, #10, is for the PSP. The top game of the week, New Mario Bros, sold 334,208 copies. #10, "Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Portable" for the PSP sold 15,640.
So yes, the DS is destroying over there. Here, the PSP has the lead from what I have read (though there are no official nation-wide sales figures, so it's hard sometimes to tell). I'm sure Nintendo hopes the DS Lite will turn the tide in the West. We'll see soon if it worked, I guess.
NDP
I thought they only released quarterly announcements, can you link to a site which shows the weekly ones? I'd love to be able to be able to keep up with the figures weekly.
Interesting; thank you for the information. It always seems a gray area to me about whether store shelves are stocked with:
1. Inventory bought and paid for by the store owner, not returnable except under special conditions such as defective).
2. Inventory perhaps tacitly bought and paid for by the store owner, but because of expected returns, actually owned by the manufacturer who is 'renting' the shelf space, with 'rent' paid by the markup on any units that sell, all remaining units returned to manufacturer and refunded to store owner.
It seems reasonable to say that the store owner can say, "Well your product didn't sell, take it back and I'll have my money back, thanks." It also seems reasonable to for the manufacturer to say, "Well, if you didn't think you could sell that many, you shouldn't have ordered so many. We could have sold it somewhere else, but now we cannot." Maybe it comes down to expertise in the market niche. For a general retail store owner (say, Target), it's hard to know exactly the local demand for any given gizmo of the thousands carried in one store. But if you specialized in something like, I don't know, mountain bike parts, you should be able to anticipate local demand correctly.
You also have the wrinkle of perishable products, like fruits and vegetables at grocery stores, where manufacturers cannot really take them back and try to sell them somewhere else, because they have gone all the way through their shelf life at the first store. Then again, grocers must employ some sort of mixed model, because I believe that many of the end cap displays and such are paid for by manufacturers.
Any additional insight here by anyone with experience in the business welcome.
The other two are only in the console market to destroy it, and replace consoles with laptops (Sony) or tablets (MS). MS uses it's presence to skirt anti-trust law and buy game developers to put the programmers out of work. MS programs to put IT workers out of work is why there are over 100,000 FOSS projects. Nintendo got it right. When the other 2 got in the HD DVD war, Nintendo realized that illegal dumping had nothing to do with gaming. Nintendo continued to focus on game play. Nintendo continues to port their franchise library to mobile. I'm not faulting the other 2. A $600 blu-ray PS3 when Sony is selling blu-ray players for $1000 is value.
And on that day, you won many internets, for MASSIVE DAMAGE.
M$ only invested about $20 in advertising the system in Japan. Many gamers over there aren't even aware the system exists. Gamers are going to the store to buy an Xbox1 not even knowing there is a 360 out.
No, this isn't true. I live in Japan and I've seen tons of xbox360 advertising. There was an initial advertising blitz during the release, and even now, I see lots of prime-time TV ads for the 360 (they seem to sponsor lots of TV shows). in fact, I've seen far more TV advertising (here in Japan) for the 360 than for any other gaming system.
They also have a fairly strong presence in many Japanese video game stores -- prominent demo kiosks, game section not relegated to back corner despite the low sales, etc. Given the absurdly low income that must come from 360 sales, I assume this means MS is forking over lots of promotional cash to stores.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Yeah, I held off on buying a DS until the Lite came out primarily for the size, initially. The DS Lite is actually small enough to fit entirely in my back pocket. Dimensionally, it's only about an inch longer on one side than the original iPod. The size of the original DS, it was like carrying around a small shoe; it didn't fit anywhere very well, it had that gap where the two screens met, so it would open all the time, and a fucking tiny ass stylus.
The screens though, of course is what sells the system. It was miserable work to squint at those terrible screens on the original DS while playing games; the new system is just infintiely more crisp, higher contrast, and of course, brighter. That I can play it at noon outside in Texas is impressive.
moox. for a new generation.
The PSP's big deal is homebrew, which the DS is lacking.
Thats not entirely true. Check out DS Homebrew project wiki
I recently became interested in it after discovering projects that could enable SNES emulation of my old games on the DS.
Of course this may or may not require jumping through a few hoops since you have to use the GBA slot, but some of the fellows have done a few interesting project (besides emulation) such as web browsers, PC game ports such as (Hexen), and VOiP.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Does Brain Age recognize the word "blue" more consistently when running on the Lite?
That's not the impression that I get from reading dsdev.org. Just 210 USD plus shipping gets you a fully homebrew-capable DS. The PSP, on the other hand, has that firmware 2.01 through 2.60 that require a specific M-rated game (which is actually banned in a few countries) to launch homebrew, and 2.70 and later that can't run homebrew at all.
In essence, all goods (essentially) are perishible, and I belive the system works more as a hybrid of the two models you describe. Namely, the retailer buys the products with the understanding that the manufacturer will take back and give credit for items that do not sell. There may be a minimum purchase required (e.g., 100 units), or a contract to buy that product from only that wholesaler. The perishible factor comes in when the manufacturer really drops the ball with regard to future support or advertising (as a retailer, would you buy 20 units of a $300 item that gets no advertising, with no recourse it they do not sell?) or with style ("what do you mean plaid isn't in anymore?")
One example of this is Greeting Cards. I work at a small pack-and-ship store (only one store, not a chain), and once a month or so, the sales rep for the greeting-card company comes in, restocks the card racks, takes some notes as to what was not sold, and throws out the 'expired' cards. We get credit for the unsold cards. These really are 'perishible goods' since you can't sell many Mother's Day cards much past the date. Even generic cards expire, as colors/political jokes/seasons change, necessitating new artwork on the cards.
I believe paper-back books work in a similar manner. The book-seller tears off the cover of the unsold books and mails them back for credit (too expensive to send the whole book). This is why there is a warning in the front-matter of paper-back books concerning purchase without a cover.
Note too, that I consistently use the term 'credit'. I bet it's pretty difficult (from the retailer's perspective) to convert said credit into hard currency.
Not that I misunderstand your point, it is valid. But these are not non-gamers games. Just because they are not the games you grew up with or the kind you like to play, does not mean that they are not played by gamers. They are actually closer to the sort of "games" people played before video games came around, and the kinds that people still play today. It's just that people are used to playing these games in the newspaper, or in other more tangible ways.
So while I understand your point, it has nothing to do with "non-gamers" it simply has to do with an entirely different demographic of gamers who you don't understand, and who the gaming industry as a whole has not understood for a number of years.
The fact that Nintendo is successful in this arena is not a surprise. This is where they started with card games over 40 years ago.
Also, I don't mean for this to be a flame, simply a post to try and clear the air of this stupid gamers vs. non-gamers nonsense. The "elderly" played games long before you were even conceived.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
Uhm I obviously meant "non-gamer" as a shortcut for "not a member of the demographic groups that are traditionally seen playing video games", not as a shorcut for "populations who never play".
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Only in the us it is close, in Europe the DS sells twice as much average than the PSP, there is a reason for that, the US is the only market where the DS and the Playstation portable is close pricewise. In Europe the PSP is 200-250 Euros (one euro resembling a little more than one 1.20 USD afair) and the DS between 100-140 Euros depending whether you want a game with it or not. It is a wonder that we do not get numbers like in japan with the DS outselling the PSP 10:1 yet ;-)
The ngage did not sell badly due to the fact that it could do decent gaming, face it most phones have a lot of games, but the input controls are lousy as hell. the ngage had serious design flaws and made switching the games an interesting experience, it was way too big etc... Its successor had removed all of these design flaws but the ngages rep already was flushed. I think the idea has a future and we will see a merge between handheld consoles and phones in the long run (same as phones slowly are gobbeling up the organizer and mp3 market currently), but the ngage had the same problem as the newton, lousy first execution second excellent execution, bad rep at the time its fixed successor came, no sales anymore. It probably will take another palm to open the market, which clearly is there, cellphone games are advertised overe here in europe everywhere, so there must be people buying and playing that stuff, despite the fact that most of them are close to being unplayable due to the lousy input controls most phones except the ngage have.
I can recommend Castlevania DS if you are into jump and runs, Ace Attourney if you like adventures, Hotel Dusk also looks very promising and the DS homebrew stuff simply is amazing (especially since you do not half brick your console like you have to on the PS, thanks to the enforced Sony firmware upgrades which leave you the option either homebrew only or newer games) I am glad I bought one of those DS suckers, the current games lineup while being good, is somewhat thin but the future lineup for the rest of the year is amazing (just like the first half has been). The console is really taking off currently. And gaming is fun, long battery life. I am really looking forward to a lot of games coming out the next half year. (I am not too interested into the new mario, I will get it used probably in a year or so)
I agree here, there is no handheld more unfriendly to the homebrewers than the psp, it is a wonder that the scene is as vivid as is despite sonies attempts to close it. Bascially you named the situation as is. Nintendo Ds, buy some hardware and you are set, you dont even void your warranty since it is all modules. PSP, old one you are set, newer one, you need a game extra and for heavens sake never play one of the newer games because they force you to upgrade your firmware. New one, no chance until it is opened again, and then Sony releases the next patch to close it and the game begins again. I think in the long run either sony will change its attitude or the psp homebrew szene will move towards greener pastures until the psp is phased out and no patches to the firmware will be done anymore. One big kudos to Nintendo for that, they did all they needed to make things a little bit harder, but they so far never have tried to shut down the homebrewers entirely. (there only was one firmware update which closed a huge security hole which opened the console without big efforts, the other ones really only improved the hardware and left the backdoorfs for the homebrewers open, old consoles do not get those updates or enforce them via new games anyway)
You are totally wrong, but I guess it is nice to make wild claims with no actual facts. FYI here are the real sales numbers for last week in the U.S. (Gamespot and NPD Funworld research numbers):
1 - New Super Mario Bros. (DS)
2 - Kingdom Hearts II (PS2)
3 - Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes a Day (DS)
4 - God of War (PS2)
5 - Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (Xbox 360)
6 - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360)
7 - MLB '06: The Show (PS2)
8 - Guitar Hero (with Guitar) (PS2)
9 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2)
10 - Kingdom Hearts (PS2)
If you can count that is:
6 (PS2)
2 (DS)
2 (Xbox 360)
Sorry try again.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
The best part about the DS Lite 'upgrade' is that suddenly people have two DS-es they don't need. So they give their old hardware away or sell it cheap. The old DS is given to someone else who first finds they're really fun to own and play on, and then realise that they'd rather a DS Lite for the additional benefits. So then they get a lite and pass on the DS to someone else yet again.
My old DS was given away to a college-age girl who never was really interested in games. Now I hear she's pretty addicted. Similarly my parents actually want to purchase one (helps I'm giving Brain Age for fathers day, and loaning them my imported lite)
Yes, early adopters of the original brick got burned and have probably paid out twice. But I suspect they're not bitter (I know I'm not) and meanwhile the system just spreads on.
Very very clever Nintendo.
Baka Drew