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DS Claims EU Dominance
Gamasutra reports that, at least in the EU, the Nintendo DS has the portable war pretty much locked up for the time being. 200,000 units of the DS Lite were sold in the ten days after its launch. From the article: "According to Nintendo of Europe, the Nintendo DS has now secured the lead in the handheld market in Europe, with sales of the format exceeding 5 million. No sales figures from Sony are available to compare directly, with only a "shipped" figure of almost 6 million for all territories bar North America and Japan." Interestingly, 136,500 units were sold in the United States in just the first two days after the handheld console's launch.
The DS even seems to be winning in the UK (source), where Nintendo has never done as well as on mainland Europe. It's been interesting watching the size of the DS section in shops grow, mostly at the expense of UMDs.
I have to say that I'm impressed in general with video game consumers. The most successful products are the consoles that treat their customers right. PS2 creamed the other consoles of its generation due to great games, an outstanding gamepad, an out-of-the-box DVD movie player, a low price, and backward compatibility. Even though the PS2 has the crappiest hardware of the 3 consoles it's still far and away the best seller.
It's especially fascinating to see Nintendo out-Sony Sony! The DS has great games with tiny load times, innovative display and control schemes, a low price, and backward compatibility. It's the big seller by an enormous margin even though the graphics pale in comparison to the very pretty PSP, which has loads of (severely locked-down) additional features, but I think people are much more comfortable carrying a clamshell portable game system than a scratch-prone beauty queen.
There are so many markets where the biggest names get the biggest sales, regardless of quality (fear not, I won't start my iPod rant). However, in the gaming world I feel fairly safe going with the crowd.
Big kudos to Nintendo for the DS. They've earned all the fanfare.
According to Nintendo anyway. This means that if I got one I'd have to run multiple WiFi networks in my house which seems a bit too much like a pain in the neck for a games console.
Of course the GP2x has no built in WiFi at all, but it does seem like a missed opportunity for a product revision this late in the WEP-is-broken world.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Right, but that was a special time. Retailers didn't want to sell anything with "video game" in the title because there were so many flops (coleco, intellivision, and several others) and no one was buying them. Nintendo actually invented R.O.B. as a gimmick so that they could sell it to retailers as a "robot game system" - although there's what, two games that work with him? And only one of them is remotely worth playing? Nintendo controlled the market because they sold just about the only thing you could buy, it could provide essentially arcade-perfect ports of their games, and many of the best-loved arcade games of the day were provided by Nintendo.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In other regionally-divided platforms, the European gamers often seem to get a raw deal, waiting ridiculous amounts of time for their version of things to be released. I think the fact that DS is region-free really helped cement them a top position in a market that's tired of waiting for stuff to find its way over there.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I bought into the PSP hype, picked up mine on launch day. Im a grown up so GTA didnt peak enough interest to buy it, but I did buy others to try and get into the PSP, Untold Legends, Lumines, Dead To Rights, Popolopis and SSX. I ended up buying a DS back in March after growing frustrated waiting for anything to come out other than Lumines that I had any interest in playing. I already had my gamepark for homebrew and emulation so that wasnt a real draw either. Its been months since I picked up my PSP but I play my DS every day, usually its 5 minutes here and there but thats whats great about the DS, for those without hours of time to dedicate to gaming there is plenty to offer.
I'm evidently not alone on this opinion, heck ive had it listed on craigslist for 3 months with a more than reasonable price and failed to even get a nibble, around here it seems the PSP is already dead.
On the other hand, my white PSP doesn't show nearly as many marks as my brother's black one. His black DS Lite is a fingerprint magnet, too. So you may well be just fine, and indeed better off with a while Lite.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
The game where you're a lawyer and can literally yell objection.
Yoshi Touch and Go which requires heavy use of the stylus.
Meteos which would be a different game without a touch screen (the ability to "launch" blocks with the stylus is half the game).
The Pac Man game where the action is totally controlled by drawing.
Lost Magic the first RPG with immersive spell casting.
Trace Memory makes use of nearly every DS bit of functionality.
The Princess Peach game which has levels and a mini-game that require blowing into the mic. Sexual innuendo, a lot of DS games seem to require blowing.
The Bomberman game where, in multiplayer, you can set bombs or blow them up by yelling nonsense.
Of course Warioware which has tons of way to play with the stylus.