DS Fastest Selling Japanese Console

Gamasutra reports that the DS is officially the fastest selling console in Japan. The console has taken just twenty months to sell 10 Million units. From the article: "As noted in the report translated by consumer website GameSpot, the Nintendo DS has been credited with reversing the shrinking Japanese games market, with Nintendo DS software and hardware dominating sales charts for at least the last twelve months. With a population of around 128 million, these latest results show that nearly 8 percent of Japanese consumers now own the console." Update: 08/02 21:20 GMT by Z : Fixed reversed month/unit numbers. Sorry, apparently lisdexic today.

Summary is wrong

[edwdig]

The summary says "The console has taken just ten months to sell 20 Million units", but it should be "20 months to sell 10 million units." The DS was released in Nov. 2004.

Re:Revving up for Wii?

[trdrstv]

"if the rumors of DS connectivity with the Wii are true."

Rumors? [ign.com]

Re:bad at math?

[Frac]

DS was first available in November 2004, which makes it roughly 20 months. The article is not out of date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS [wikipedia.org]

Several Corrections.

[trdrstv]

Ok. Here's the Break down:

The DS debuted in North America in November 2004.

The DS debuted in Japan in December 2004.

The DS Lite debuted in North America in June 2006.

The DS Lite debuted in Japan in March 2006.

The 21 million sold [joystiq.com] Includes all versions (including lite, and multiple colors) from Every region from the earliest launch (USA) until July 24, 2006.

10 million of the 21 million were sold in JAPAN alone. Japan's Population is about 128 million people [google.com] meaning about 8% of the population (of Japan) has one.

Any questions?

Re:Sales stats

[Kazzahdrane]

Here's the numbers you mentioned:

* DS Lite: 262,453
* PSP: 35,938
* PS2: 22,288
* DS: 6,344
* GBA SP: 2,953
* Xbox 360: 1,472
* Game Boy Micro: 1,410
* Gamecube: 1,076
* GBA: 20
* Xbox: 0

And a link (which in turn links to the original source):
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/28/japanese-hardwar e-sales-17-july-23-july-bad-comparison-week [joystiq.com]

Re:Console?

[7Prime]

It's an extension of the criterion that a video game system designed to output to the family TV set is a console. The Super NES with Super Game Boy is a console. The GameCube with Game Boy Player is a console. But no console available to the public as of August 2006 runs DS software.

I think what he means is, "what use is this as criteria?" Being able to be played on a TV or off a TV does not drastically change the marketting demographic or style of gameplay. Portability does, but it seems that this is not what we're talking about. There has to be a compelling reason to divide objects into different catagories. Defining a handheld as "something that can never be played on a TV" is meaningless catagorization. It may be true, but it has no real value as a catagorical feature. Defining a handheld in terms of how it is played, and where it can be played, are far more useful features in defining the catagory, as they have a noticable impact on the demographic, style of gameplay, marketting, etc.

There are subtle differences between consoles and handheld consoles, but probably the only large difference is that today's handhelds = yesterday's consoles, in terms of ability, and to a lesser extent, style of gameplay (GameGear is a Master System derivitive, GBA is an SNES derivitive, the DS is basically an N64 with a whole new interface system, the PSP is a PlayStation derivitive), there may be some differences in hardware and programming, but generally, their aim is to achieve the level of power and style of the last generation system.

The DS is the first major handheld (unless you count the Virtual Boy) to take the console genre in a drastically different direction from its TV-based counterpart. Nintendo finally used the fact that it is a self contained, portable, piece of hardware, as a way of prividing functionality that a TV-based console can't do. This is an exception... not the rule.

But for the most part, the only really notable differences between handhelds and TV-based consoles are:

1. They're portable
2. They're generally a generation behind, in terms of graphics, sound, and gameplay style
3. The games are weighted toward being able to quickly pick up/put down the system (though, often this is simply the addition of a "quick save" feature).

One can make a pretty good arguement that these differences are fairly irrelivant, in terms of gameplay experience, at least to their last-gen TV-based counterparts. So, yeah, I would consider handheld games to be a slight varrient on the TV-based console world. Although, since the DS and PSP are able to handle the same KINDS of graphics as their current TV-based counterparts (if not up to their quality, but at least their style), the generation gap is becoming less and less apparrent. Metroid Prime Hunters is solidly a current generation title, for instance (even if I thought it was terrible in comparison to its GameCube counterparts). GTA: Liberty City Stories is (supposedly) able to replicate the gameplay experience of GTAIII; in fact, it was popular enough to be the first game ever (I believe) to be ported from a handheld to a TV-based console.