Nintendo DS Sales Driving Games Industry Growth 67
VonSnouty writes "After watching Sony and to a lesser extent Microsoft stealing market share over the past few years, the DS is seeing Nintendo producing its most bullish numbers for years. Indeed, it's just used the latest NPD figures to claim that the Nintendo DS is largely responsible for US games industry growth in 2006 so far. From the article: 'Up until the end of September, the U.S. industry overall shows revenue growth of 11 per cent when compared with the same period in 2005. Nearly all of the growth comes from the portable DS — without it, the industry would report a mere 1.6 per cent growth over the past nine months.'"
Its the untapped market (Score:5, Insightful)
The hardcore market is a static market for the most part. Of course it will grow, but when you tap into a new market, the growth is a lot more noticable.
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Except
Yes, we're that old. Sigh.
--Jeremy
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Re:Its the untapped market (Score:4, Insightful)
Brain Age has done really well, and people point to it alot, but the entire Touch Generation line of games appeals to non-gamers. Even outside of that series, however, the games are purposefully aimed at the perception of being easy to pick up and have fun with. I agree no one game has been the single driver, but the general selection of games together has an affect.
I bought the DS Lite because I liked the ability to tote it around while I have downtime, and New Super Mario Bros. was irresistable to me. I probably fall into the market you describe, where the platform was the most important aspect.
The unintended consequence of me getting the DS Lite, though, is that my wife has been using the DS as well. She likes brain age, loved NSMB, and recently picked up SM vs. DK 2 because she likes puzzle games. She is someone who stopped playing games a while back because they just got too complicated/not fun enough. She is exactly the market that the original poster was referring to: someone who has not been a gamer for a long time, but has been brought into it because of the DS game selection.
The original post was correct in saying that a large chunk of the growth is the untapped market of people who either never have been gamers, or haven't been for a while.
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Nintendo doesn't need a HALO to do what HALO did for the Xbox. There is a whole library of HALOs on the DS. It was easy for one above average game to start moving Xbox's...but when you have such a great library like the DS has, you'll rarely see one game pull those kinds of numbers. It's spread out a bit more.
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I really don't think I'm going to be able to hang on to them until Xmas; she's about ready to go out and buy them on her own...
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I grew up on the Intellivision, TRS-80s, and of course the NES. My SO, (in her words) was never what you would consider a gamer of any system. Nothing more than playing the occasional game or two, whenever she was around others that were gaming.
Our kids are what I would consider to be hardcore gamers (time-w
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I think they include that in all their product. I remember reading that on my Gamecube manual and thinking "WTF!? The gall of them..." The wording could have been a little more diplomatic.
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Wow, that's just sad. (Score:5, Funny)
Xbox management team: you are fired. Seriously. Just got your next-gen ass handed to you by an cheap white handheld with two buttons. Because its more fun.
You are sentenced to go play Katamari Damacy and Brain Age for two years.
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I don't think I
Microsoft had touch screen games FIRST (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows Mobile, a Microsoft handheld platform, had touch screen games before Nintendo first sold the DS.
Re:Microsoft had touch screen games FIRST (Score:4, Insightful)
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Just because I'm picky... (Score:1)
Anyway, I wouldn't say that Nintendo is dominating the Xbox using the DS, since they're two dramatically different systems, appealing to dramatically different markets, to play dramatically different games. The innovation of the DS helps a lot as well, since the 360 is just a bunch of the same stuff we've already seen for a number of years, only shinier.
It'll be
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I dunno, man. The DS isn't just a handheld, though. For the first time, it's a portable console that offers something that TV consoles can't (besides portability), and it's starting to feel less and less like a console you would ONLY play while waiting in line at the DMV. By that, I mean, it's starting to become a part of the prime-time gaming market, as well as the "quick and simple" handheld market. If Metroid Prime Hunters hadn't sucked so much (having nothing to do with the hardware), during the late ev
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If they think their sales are good now (Score:2)
The PS2 was a relatively cheap DVD player once upon a time and that certainly encouraged some people to invest in one.
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It makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
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"Playstation" has come close, but there are a good number of adults that, when asked "Who makes the Playstation?", answer "Nintendo." They finally figured out that not all games were "Nintendo", but the advancement stopped there. Somehow, all video game systems are still made
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Re:It makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Ironically, the first thing that comes to people's minds when they see a Nintendo DS, actually doesn't have the word "Nintendo" in it... it's a "Game Boy". The term "Game Boy" is probably even more synonomous with handheld gaming than "Nintendo" ever was with TV gaming. Most people STILL think the thing is called the "Game Boy DS" (especially since everyone was bombarded by the term "SP" last round, so many people don't question the idea that you just put two letters after the words "Game Boy").
But you do draw an insteresting distinction. The Playstation will always be a "Playstation", the "Playstation 2" will always be a "PS2" or "Playstation", and not "A Sony". The XBox and XBox360 will always be "XBox" and "360", and never "A Microsoft". The NES and SNES were most definitely "Nintendos" though.
I must admit, though, that the use of the term "Nintendo" to mean any game console did go down hill after the Super Nintendo, due to a number of things:
Club house games (Score:1)
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Buying Games (Score:1)
Where is the best place to buy DS games? I feel like an idiot at EB because the section is so small and there is always a kid there I feel like I am tripping over. Online, I don't feel like Amazon's store style works well. I wish it were organized like the iTunes music store. Also, why do Nintendo's portable games seem to go out of print? The NES Classics series is a great example. Only the dreggs are left on store shelves. Also, lots of great GBA games are gone from the
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I also like Target and even Walmart some times has decent selection of games.
Target is a great place to look when new systems come out. I always have good luck finding them there.
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--R.J.
It's good to see (Score:2, Insightful)
The DS is admittedly very underpowered when benchmarked next to the PSP, but it would be like comparing apples and o
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True enough, in fact it has been said many times that the XBox and Gamecube were very similar in processing power but that they had different advantages; any game that took advantage of the Gamecube's fixed functionality pipline (usually) produced more polygons with greater texture detail than was possible on the XBox, the XBox's programable pipleine allowed it to generat