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DS Sells 20 million, 17 Million More by March 2007
Wowzer writes "Nintendo announced today that sales of its hand-held, dual-screened video game player, the Nintendo DS, have topped 20 million worldwide (guesstimates say 21,270,000). Nintendo expects DS (Lite) sales to be 17 million between April 2006 and March 2007. From today's financial report: 'The company raised its full-year sales forecast of the DS handheld game players to 17 million units for the year ending March 2007, up from 16 million unit sales projection made in May. Sales of DS game titles are projected to rise to 75 million units, from 70 million.' The report refers to PSP owners as just combat-game fans, while the DS is said to target a wider audience with more diverse games such as the 6 million seller Nintendogs." I will say, I was very skeptical when I first heard about the DS and the split screen — but having played a number of different games, I've found I like it. But I have not played Nintendogs, unlike some other people I know.
And she was the kind of person who never let us have a console game after the Apple II+ showed up (we had an Atari 2600 before that). Every $PRESENT_GETTING_TIME, we'd ask for a playstation, or nintendo, or something, but we were always told "No, you have a computer, it plays games, no consoles". So we went without. My wife bought me a PSX back in '96, but I haven't upgraded since.
Then a few weeks ago I got a DS Lite and my mom visited for a few days. She started playing Brain Age and that was it. When they left, my dad asked how much they were and where they could be purchased. A week later, she's busy playing Sudoku and Mario on her own DS Lite.
If you want to get one and your spouse gives you a wary eye, go get it and get Brain Age at the same time. You'll be a hero. But you may wind up arguing who gets to play with it.
There are a lot more general gamers than hardcore gamers?
Well said - if only there was some way of kicking the "Nintendo is dying" trolls in the teeth with that statement.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
We own two. One for the son (blue), one for the doughter (pink).
My wife and I like the brain training games so two units are used by four people.
I'm sure my mum (79 years of age) will like the brain training games too so I bought a DS lite (white) with two games for her which I will give to her next Saturday.
What makes a god-fearing, law-abiding family father buy expensive electronic toys? High amounts if good (and mostly clean) fun!!!
I' still think I'm not a Nintendo fanboy but I sure like the stuff they make!
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
That actually depends on how you define superior product. In my view that means the product that more people are willing to pay the price for. Combined with actualy making a profit that would be a superioe product.
Of course you can also argue tha is someone has one customer that makes him a profit bigger than the 20 M. seperate products that that is a superior product...
Like I said agree with you, but it does depend on definitions.
Nintendo would be able to at least add a 1 to those numbers if they released the black DS Lite in the USA (a.k.a. "I'd buy one"). Even though it has some nice hardware (touchscreen, built-in WiFi, mic, ARM processor), I was also skeptical of the DS at first: "Oh come on, how many developers are going to make use of the touch screen"... thankfully my skepticism was vanquished when developers came through with real creativity and awesomeness. Add to the awesome games the ability to play movies and mp3's (http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3834), run Linux (url:http://www.dslinux.org/>), and the awesome looks of the machine... and you have an unstoppable portable.
...if they were only in black (and the cool dark navy blue... and the blue "ice").
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
If they bring something besides Hyper White DS Lite to the states. I've got a platinum DS, and I like it, but I want a new one. Two DS's would also open up multiplayer Mario Kart, Mario64, and Tetris with my wife, and she could get her own Nintendogs. Come on, Nintendo! Give America the other DS Lite colors! And don't bundle them with something, please. Unless you let me choose what game I want in the 'bundle', then we can work something out. Black/Navy Blue DS Lite to the states! Send 'em over. As long as we don't have to deal with Guy, The Adversary to get them. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/06/09
but what are the latest worldwide shipped figures for the PSP?
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Nintendo, just like Apple, understands something that others still don't: it's not all about hardware and raw power anymore. Who cares if the Wii is less powerful than the Xbox 360 and PS3? Who cares if the Nintendo DS is less powerful than the PSP? In the end, it's all about innovation and software.
The iPod would be almost useless without iTunes (the program, not the iTMS - iTunes Music Store), and the Nintendo DS would be pointless if all it could play was the same games as on the SNES/N64/Gamecube.
More processing power? Sure. Better graphics? Of course. But not at the expense of innovation and good software.
I don't remember who said it, but it goes something like this: "The most powerful computer on the planet would be useless without software to run on it."
I don't have the worldwide numbers but it is interesting to note that June (because of the DSlite release) is the only month since last November that the DS outsold the PSP in the US
sorces
You misspelled "outshipped". There's a stack of PSPs at Wal-Mart, but I can't find a DS Lite in my whole city.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
That doesn't mean too much to me. Walmart is well known for their ability to manage JIT inventory. Just because they don't have a DS doesn't mean it sold out. Just because they have PSPs lying around doesn't mean they're not selling. You can't read anything into inventory lying around. I went to Circuit City last week and they had a million DS games and not one PSP game even though they had the hardware and accessories for both...so the PSP games must be selling out completely?
Nintendo themselves has said they've passed 21 million.
Source - this is off PR Newswire, so it's a regular press release.
Not to mention the idea of posting this article without a reliable news source. Blogging a quarterly shareholder meeting is one thing, but when Nintendo has released press releases with the same information, why bother falling back on a pretty-much no-name blog? And if you don't think PGC is "reliable", then pick one more to your liking. Preferably one without a stupid animated GIF in it.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
My mom just got one too. And this after suffering through years of me playing Atari and the NES, she was the last person who I thought would ever express an interest in video games.
But she saw an add for Brain Training and had to have it. After looking all over town for a DS Lite, she finally got one at WalMart and I haven't heard from her since....
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
I think there are problems at Bentonville with regards to DS shipments. I went by the local one last week looking for a DS Lite for my wife and was told they didnt have their second shipment yet. Went to another and found they said the same thing. Finally went to a Target a few miles further down the road and found they had 2 in stock.
Huh, I can't think of any reason why that could be...
(Sorry, I usually try not to be a fanboy, but this one I couldn't resist.)
The ironic thing is those trolls tend to be Sony or Microsoft fanboys. Which built their userbase on general/casual gamers. Sad that they harp on the whole casual gamer vs hardcore gamer. Nobody cares about the hardcore gamer, the profit they make from hardcore gamers is laughable. If Sony say (this upcoming PS3 era) lost its casual userbase...sure Sony might survive (Nintendo did) but they'd find themselves in Nintendo's shoes during its N64-GCN era.
"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" ~ Laughing Man - GITS:SAC
The ironic thing is those trolls tend to be Sony or Microsoft fanboys. Which built their userbase on general/casual gamers. Sad that they harp on the whole casual gamer vs hardcore gamer. Nobody cares about the hardcore gamer, the profit they make from hardcore gamers is laughable. If Sony say (this upcoming PS3 era) lost its casual userbase...sure Sony might survive (Nintendo did) but they'd find themselves in Nintendo's shoes during its N64-GCN era.
I would think the "hardcore gamer" is the videogame equivalent to the "audiophile" or "videophile" in that it may not be a huge market, but a wildly profitable one. Who else is willing to drop $400 for a *sound card* or $500+ for the latest video card? Or heck, even the lowly NIC gets accelleration (?!). Then there's all the gaming mice and keyboards with super high framerates and low latency button pushes (a good keyboard and mouse helps, yes, but considering the differences between good and "hardcore"...). And since LCD screens have taken over more or less the monitor market, big screen CRTs with high end gamer features are even more pricey (because 6/10ms refresh isn't fast enough). Sure you can buy CRT monitors still, but the half-decent ones are hard to find compared to the crappy ones always on sale (partly because a few bucks more gets you an LCD that's half decent and not fuzzy). Oh yeah, said gamer also never uses wireless, because the latency of wireless affects their ping (true, but we're still shaving milliseconds here).
I expect to see basic 10/100 switches with cut-through switching touted as the next greatest thing in gaming shortly because cut-through switching has less latency than store-and-forward (still talking about milliseconds).
The only thing that reallys keeps "hardcore gamers" at bay tends to be that most tend to be intelligent and can look through the marketing...
Zelda Four Sword and FF:CC are two of the very best games for the gamecube. My wife and I played both. We're almost done with Zelda and kinda left FF:CC for it (we like Zelda better). Another game the GBA connectivity shines in is Pacman: VS, which we play anytime people are over, especially if these people are non-gamers.
I was very highly sceptical about GBA-GC connectivity at first and saw it as a ploy to suck more money out of people, but its really one of the best features of any current-generation consoles. Just awesome.
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
It may be cutesy, but Animal Crossing is a lot of fun. It's what I wanted The Sims to be like. I haven't visited anyone via the net yet, that's my next task.
It's also a good game to sit and take a casual half hour break with every day or two, so it really focuses on a different part of the potential gaming audience.
I had no fundamental objection to the PSP, and there were 3 or 4 games I'd have played on it, but when I tried one the loading times were really intolerable.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It was less of a pain since there was only 1 wire required, and the rest were wavebirds getting passed around. I can't imagine how much of a mess that would be with 4 cabled controllers. Even though they do offer backwords cabled support with the GameCube docking station, I would love it if they had a wireless mod built into the Wii. Wireless just keeps it cleaner.
What I would love to know is why can't the 'DS Download play' pull down single cart multiplayer from a GBA game if it supports the Wireless adapter? We tried it with the Dr. Mario NES release, but no luck. :(
It means alot, actually. Nintendo have sold over 20 million DS/DS Lites since its release. Thats to the stores and out the doors in the hands of customers. Sony have so far only release details on how many PSP's it has shipped. All that means is that Sony have delivered them to someone. Walmart might have 500,000 sitting unsold in their warehouse, but Sony still count it, whereas Nintendo dont count it unless money has changed hands between customer and retailer.
The half price DS Lites GAME is selling seem to be going pretty quick too: the last fifty took less than 30 seconds...
Almost two years ago if someone pointed to this dual screened mutant and said,
-It would lead a gaming renaissance in Japan, making the Japanese game market larger than America so far in the year 2006.
-It would outsell the PSP in all markets.
-It would be very popular among girls too.
-And popular among older people with a game called 'Brain Age'. This demographic the industry thought was impossible to reach.
-Animal Crossing Wild World would outsell Final Fantasy 12 in Japan (could Final Fantasy 3 outsell FF12?)
-A game called Nintendogs will outsell Halo and is set to outsell Halo 2.
-Companies like Electronic Arts will struggle on the system as they do not know how to deal with disruption technology. But smaller companies like Atlus shall rise.
-Let's not forget a new 2D Mario (after fifteen years) turning the markets on fire everywhere.
You would think the person had gone mad. And many people thought Nintendo had gone mad in late 2004 (just as many thought they had gone mad with the Wii)
Where is the PSP? Well, the software for the PSP is abysmal in Japan. The DS sales lead over the PSP in Japan is so gigantic that if you begin to combine PSP markets, the PSP still doesn't outsell the DS.
So what is different? Nintendo sees the DS's true competition of those who aren't interested in games at all. The company mission is taking affect: "Make as many gamers as possible."
Two years ago...
-Japan had been in a slow decline and analysts were wondering if it worth the effort to 'win' Japan anymore.
-Everyone predicted the PSP would do to the DS what Playstation did to the Nintendo consoles.
-America's game market was extremely healthy with blockbusters like GTA: SA and Halo 2.
-Nintendo was about to go third party.
Now...
-Japan's game market is now bigger than America's and is rapidly expanding.
-Everyone's lofty PSP predictions now have egg on their face.
-America's game market has been in free-fall since 2004. People are ignoring this issue and calling it a 'transition period' without mentioning that the next-gen systems out such as the PSP and Xbox 360 are not growing the market in any way.
-Nintendo swims in profits.
Anyone who believes the seventh generation of consoles will match the PS2 era is deluding themselves. Let the Seventh Generation of Consoles be known as the Fragmentation Era as the games market is dividing into seperate realms.
Welcome to the new world.
For the same reason you can't connect to a Wi-Fi network using a Bluetooth adapter. Just because it's radio doesn't mean it's the same frequency, the same modulation, the same data link protocol, or the same network protocol.
I understand that, however due to the relatively close timing of the 2 product launches (GBA Wireless in Early 2004, the DS in Late 2004) in just seems like a missed opportunity for Nintendo to make them compatible.
You know, even earlier this year, I felt that Nintendo was struggling, and I'm a big nintendo fan. Always have been. It pained me to no end to think of one of my favorite gaming companies being toppled by the evil empire of Sony.
But at any rate, what can I say? I picked up a DS in January or February, and ever since then it's had so much momentum build up it's insane. Before now, though, what I'd seen from Nintendo was the regurgitation of the same old and tired, though beloved, franchises - yip-de-fucking-doo, another Gamecube Mario game, another Metroid, another Zelda. Sure, each one used newer graphics and admittedly had often fascinating new gameplay elements. But a handful of in-house titles a year do not make for success.
And the GBA? Christ. It'd already become a no-man's-land of awful movie and children's cartoon franchises. Speak to me no more of Nickelodeon games, nor Barbie (see subscript).
But the DS really seems to have sparked something for the general public. I think it's something that we've been waiting for, and Nintendo has brought it. I think it may be the true meaning of that damnable word, "innovation". It's coming from all -over- Nintendo, now. It seems more... Unrestrained. It's not "innovating" within a closed franchise (now Link can smash pots 200% better than any previous Zelda!), and it's not a fancy hardware platform that can perform miracles spitting out the latest boring edgy-teen-angst game(yes, Sony, that means you).
What Nintendo has done is offered a complete package. We have an entirely new hardware package, the DS. It has an entirely new control interface, the touchscreen, combined with the familiar D-pad and shoulder buttons that, if you don't know them already, are pretty intuitive to learn - a fusion of new and old. The hardware isn't obnoxiously overpowered for what's intended on the system, either. And the touchscreen itself encourages an entirely new kind of thinking for the software developers, bringing us new methods of interaction with our games, in some cases making us feel more a part of the worlds that they're trying to create, or at least greatly simplifying our interactions in them.
The end result is this fascinating device that provides an entirely new face to the thing that we love to do: play games. It's refreshing and it's welcoming, and it's Nintendo that's done it. Will we continue to see the same old franchises resurrected? I'm sure we will. Will we continue to see more fun and interesting software titles that have nothing to do with Mario? I'm certain we will. It's a win-win proposition for nostalgia gamers and those of us who crave something new.
I do still maintain my position, though, that Nintendo has created the perfect hardware platform for lightweight portable computing, and may be shooting themselves in the foot by not offering non-game solutions (though the browser is a step in the right direction, as is the TV tuner, though only for use in Japan). A GPS unit for one of these? VOIP phone cart? how about a data sampler and recorder? There are quite a few options available (though I'm glad they didn't do something dumb like integrate an MP3 player. That would've raised the price by far too much and felt too much like a cheap gimmick). Let's see some action on this thing, huh?
Will Nintendo falter in the future? It's felt shaky before, but as we can see, bounced back in a pretty big way. I hope they can keep on top of it, restore market dominance, and then, do the unthinkable in that position - keep on producing innovative games and hardware that are fun to play.
(subscript: Let me just say, by the by, that Barbie Horse Adventures is a message to little both gamers, and little girls. It says "Here at Mattel, we'd just like to mention that WE HATE YOU. Yes, we hate gamers, and we hate little girls, too. Parents, lock the doors, cause we're gonna come rape your children! We're SO fucking rich! Buy some more Barbie shit!")
(sub-subscript: ever notice how those in
And the Japanese gaming market was always larger than the USAs. Unless you go back to the days of Atari and Intellivision.
Like I said, it's comparing apples to oranges. You can't compare units shipped to units sold. So unlike your conclusion, it means nothing. Not to mention that Nintendo's method of tracking units sold to customers is spotty at best. How can they know exactly how many were sold unless the retailer tells them? And is it really in the retailer's best interest to report how many units they've actually sold?
a) There's only so much inventory a retailer's going to have lying around. If the PSP didn't sell no retailer would order more from Sony.
b) If Nintendo doesn't want people to compare Sony's shipped versus their sold figures all they have to do is publish their own shipped figures. They just have to add it as an afterthought to the sold figures (20 million sold and over 768 million shipped).
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I'd like to see the numbers of both sold AND shipped psp's. (why compare Sonys shipped numbers to Nintendos sold numbers?)
psp has been out selling the ds in America but psp games haven't done nearly as well.
(maybe locoroco and tekken will help change that. doesn't look like it though)
Probably worse off if you want to think about it that way. Nintendo doesn't sell their consoles at a loss (what do you think the loss will be on the PS3? a few hundred?) plus their games don't cost nearly as much to make and they have a pretty big dedicated fan base.
Sure a hardcore gamer will spend $400 for a video card but that doesn't mean they would spend $800+ for a console so that means the consoles get sold at a loss.. not a good thing for profit. also they want bleeding edge games which cost a lot to develop and unless it's a proven franchise it's a risk (develop super expensive game for super picky hardcore gamers who end up not liking your game for some odd reason etc..)
17.03 Million as of March 31st. Quite out of date, but expect new numbers in the next few days.
Think logically here. Consider the system as a flow, from Sony to the retailer, and from the retailer to the customer. Units shipped/month measures the flow rate to the retailer, units sold/month measured the flow rate to the customer. In practice, the two rates are roughly equal. The retailer might keep some inventory, but that's irrelevent. What's relevant is that the retailer isn't going to keep a continually growing inventory. For the size of the inventory to remain constant, the number of units shipped to the retailer wil be the same as the number of units sold to the customer.
In other words, if Sony is consistently shipping 500k units/month, that means 500k units/month are getting sold through retail channels, on average. If the systems weren't selling, retailers would drop their orders for the next month, and we'd see that in the sales figures. The only place where the size of the inventory matters is in judging total units sold, which is different from the total units shipped by the size of the inventory. Inventories are non-zero, but they're quite small in the case of modern retailers (nowhere near your 500k figure). Warehousing unsold product is very expensive, both for the storage itself and because of the capital tied up in stored merchandise. Therefore, retailers very rarely keep large inventories.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Actually, that's not true. It seems believable, but if you actually look at the statistics, its not the case. Casual gaming is still a very emerging marketplace. It's growing quite fast, and I think Nintendo is banking on that growth, but the gaming industry today is still owned by the GTAs, Halos, Final Fantasys, etc.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The important difference here is that Audiophiles and Videophiles listen to and watch the same content as all other users, and mostly use the same formats, too (CD and DVD). Game consoles have exclusive content (many of the best games are exclusives). The analogy works with PCs, but not consoles.
I think you're being imprecise with the definition of "hardcore gamer" and "casual gamers". Sony's market is from people who buy Madden, Halo, GTA, Final Fantasy, MGS, etc. I wouldn't call these "casual gaming" franchises, not in the sense of what games like the Sims, Nintendogs, Brain Age, Animal Crossing, etc, are trying to target.
The gaming industry is still the domain of enthusiasts. For every game like the Sims or Civ that appeals to a "casual" gamer market, there are a dozen WoWs, Dooms, and UTs. Read some statistics about the gaming industry --- they're quite surprising. "Casual gaming", such as wireless and online gaming, is still much smaller than PC gaming, which is about a quarter of the size of console gaming. Both the latter two markets are dominated by "enthusiast" titles. That leaves the marketshare of "casual" games looking fairly small.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'm not sure if its the same with the DS, but all the major retailers DID report sales for the GBA SP. As soon as the unit was rung up and the serial number scanned (which is why it was visible from outside the box), the serial, date, and name/location of the store was sent on to Nintendo. That's part of how they kept track of warranty information.
I found this out first-hand when I tried to exchange a silver SP (still unopened) that I bought on clearance at K*B for a black one at Wal-Mart the next day. The customer service lady refused to take the exchange, since she knew it wasn't sold by Wal-Mart. I would say being able to detect fraudulent returns *is* in the retailer's best interest.
You know, even earlier this year, I felt that Nintendo was struggling, and I'm a big nintendo fan. Always have been. It pained me to no end to think of one of my favorite gaming companies being toppled by the evil empire of Sony
You know what, I can recognise american players pretty easily (I may be wrong sometimes). These are people that think what is happening in the USA is the same as what happens everywhere in the world.
Nintendo is not an american company, Nintendo was never struggling either. Nintendo lost market share in home console market and that's all.
Their handheld always sold very well actually. But american people, focused on 3D and the like, didn't even consider handheld, but spoke of only XBox and Sony home consoles.
But at any rate, what can I say? I picked up a DS in January or February, and ever since then it's had so much momentum build up it's insane
The momentum was even before the DS launch, only hardcore 3D gamers didn't see it. You know, those that were blinded by PSP, and still are.
Before now, though, what I'd seen from Nintendo was the regurgitation of the same old and tired, though beloved, franchises - yip-de-fucking-doo, another Gamecube Mario game, another Metroid, another Zelda
Saying the Nintendo franchise are old and tired is pure ignorance. Each occurrence have innovation, they are nothing like old and tired, as most are different actually.
You could say that for the Pokemon franchise though.
And the GBA? Christ. It'd already become a no-man's-land of awful movie and children's cartoon franchises. Speak to me no more of Nickelodeon games, nor Barbie (see subscript)
Again a USA centric view. GBA games market is nothing like that actually. That's also on e of the thing that tells me the success of the consoles is decided in Japan : american companies can't do better than sequels and movie/cartoon franchises. A movie/cartoon franchise can be good though.
What Nintendo has done is offered a complete package. We have an entirely new hardware package, the DS. It has an entirely new control interface, the touchscreen, combined with the familiar D-pad and shoulder buttons that, if you don't know them already, are pretty intuitive to learn - a fusion of new and old
You're two years late on this. What we've got is a gaming platform for all ages, not just for hardcore 3D 20-ish gamers, those that won't play FPS on a handheld.
Nintendo said it would do it and succeeded. And I hope the Wii will succeed where the Gamecube failed : do the same for home consoles.
Will Nintendo falter in the future? It's felt shaky before, but as we can see, bounced back in a pretty big way
That's your limited view again. Nintendo never felt shaky before. That was sensationalist "journalists" that wanted clicks, saying Nintendo made far less than the year before, which was only because the year before was amazing, so when they did very well the year after, it was looking worse obviously.
I hope they can keep on top of it, restore market dominance, and then, do the unthinkable in that position - keep on producing innovative games and hardware that are fun to play
Nintendo never stopped doing this. Again you didn't notice because of the lost market share of N64, regained a little with Gamecube.
Nintendo had to change their attitude. What lost them from the start was their attitude with Squaresoft and FFVII. This was their biggest mistake.
But they are recovering now. Seeing Square Enix titles on the handhelds and even on the Gamecube shows they're in good shape to regain their old position.
those that won't play FPS on a handheld.
I'm one of them, I hate to admit.
Two 10-minute deathmatches in MP:H and my hands feel like I've been playing Guitar Hero for six hours.
OK, mate. first off, yes, yes I am an american gamer. The Nintendo that I see, and interact with, is Nintendo of America. I know very well that Nintendo of Japan will continue, and quite strongly, without NOA. Japan is way cooler than the US, etc, etc. And gets all the awesome Nintendo toys that the American market never sees, which pisses me off to no end.
But allow me to clarify some things for you, so you can sleep easier tonight, K? K.
When I say I see Nintendo(NOA) struggling, I mean that I see it struggling in the marketplace creatively, and in mind-share, and the home console market. In America. I know that their handheld division is strong, and always has been. The PSP didn't blind me, or anybody I know; we all know that it's an overpriced piece of kak that, while nifty, probably won't have the staying power of the Gameboy line.
You took issue with my statement about the classic Nintendo franchises. You're just countering my subjective statement with another subjective statement, which gets us nowhere. Nonetheless, I maintain that Nintendo keeps flogging the same characters over, and over, and over again. Yes, they make it shinier each time, and yes, as I said, they do bring in new styles of play. But it's still the SAME creative property being reorganized again, and again, and again. Whether or not the games are fun is immaterial to my argument - it's still Samus, it's still Mario. Bring me something new, already! Can't Mario have a break? He's been smashing barrels and rescuing princesses since 1981! And again, as I said before; even with a new game in every franchise once a year, that's still less than ten new titles a year! That is simply not enough to support console sales, except to idiotic fanboys like me and presumably yourself.
I quote: GBA games market is nothing like that actually.
In America, yes, yes it is. If you're in America and just being a cock-knob, go to your local mega-store and check out the GBA selection. Think you're gonna find Fire Emblem? Hell, go to your local gaming store and check out the selection, and you'll still be shocked at the ridiculous percentage of bad franchise games. In America. Yes. If you're not, you may not see that - lucky you. There are more GBA games out there, yes, but nobody is carrying them in-store - which is how games get major sales figures, rarely by dorks like you and me special-ordering from the internet! And yes, franchise games could be good, but they're not. And yes, that's a tremendously subjective statement to make, but I stand by it. Most of them are, in fact, craptastic. See my Barbie Horse Adventures statement for more details on that.
I don't understand your complaint with my praises of the DS. It's been around for longer than I've had one, yes. Steam has been building up that entire time, but it truly seems to have gained an even greater momentum in the past maybe twelve months - I hear FAR more about the DS now than I heard about it this time last year, and I don't think all of that is just because I own one now.
N64 and Cube both -did- lose a chunk of marketshare. They got 0wned by Sony in sales figures in the US, and a big part of the problem, I believe, was a lack of games on the US market. We got all the usual mario, metroid, etc games, which were all very fun - but Sony did what Nintendo used to do, which is build up a pretty huge software library in a relatively short time. Meanwhile, we were left playing the same few (admittedly mostly fun, but still) games on 64 and Cube, waiting and watching our buddies play hundreds of titles on PSX and PS2...
Yes, Nintendo is recovering now. That's what I said. That was the point of my post. They're getting better. For them to get better, they have to have fallen some. We may not agree on the fine points, but we agree on that. And yes, one more time I add for completeness, in the American market. QED.
I know the feeling. :( It's a cool game and I love the concept, but my meaty hands and bad eyes have a tough time playing more than a few DM's in a row before I'm just exhausted, unlike playing, say, Red Faction on PC or console...
Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll release an MP:H for Cube or for Wii?
I'm also terribly reluctant to pick up any of the other FPS's for DS for the same reason. I love FPS games, but I'm very wary of them on the small screen.
Eh I guess that depends on which viewpoint you look from. I've heard plenty of hardcore gamers (heh) claim that Halo, GTA, and Madden are mainly played by casual gamers.
"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" ~ Laughing Man - GITS:SAC