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Last month I wrote an article titled “is the Nintendo DS the biggest seller this Christmas”. In it I said that the DS was accounting for over 90% of the hits I was getting on my site. Well that trend continued right up till the New Year. Then the tide turned and the Nintendo Wii started getting about 60% of the hits.
Now there are a few things that could have happened but my own feeling are that the poor supply of Wii’s and Ds’s in Europe meant that the more personal platform that the DS is made more people try and get one, along with it being a bit cheaper.
Since the New Year the Wii has come back into play and a more reasonable supply coupled with people waiting thinking the supply would increase.
Another thing I noticed was a great increase in the number of hits for games, well I suppose it was going to happen, thousands of new consoles out there and they want new games to play.
Surprisingly the PS2 has been right up there in hits which is surprising as I had only a small percentage of hits on PS2 over the whole of the Christmas and new year period.
Clearly the Nintendo sales figures would suggest the future is still very bright as far as the DS is concerned: Over 25 million consoles were making a total of over 60 million worldwide thus making it the biggest selling games console of 2007.
As I said before the software sales are very buoyant, with over eight million copies of Nintendo Dogs being shifted in Europe alone since its release.
The only cloud on the horizon for the DS is the number of games available, and sources are saying that the age group for the DS is still to old. What do I mean by that well take the Brain Training game, well its one of the best sellers but it’s the older generation that’s been buying it, probably trying to get that sharpness back they once had (my be). Well the problem being how many of these type of games can you bring out, especially if the first one was that good?
At this point it's worth noting some differences between the Japanese and European DS consumer – the Japanese have wholeheartedly embraced learning and language-based games released for the handheld since its launch and vast quantities of them have inundated the market.
Over here, games such as Dr Kawashima's Brain Training have done surprisingly well but it's still predominantly the likes of New Super Mario Bros, Pokémon and Mario Kart that sell. So if Japanese developers feel the end could be coming for brain training-type titles, it shouldn't have to much impact on consumers here.
As stated the DS's game market in Japan being largely made up of older people. And its getting more difficult to make more unique titles, especially in Japan which is still very conservative. Many people know that the DS has very unique titles, like Brain Training, or something like that, but it's not for younger-aged market. It's kind of older people, like me."
Previously many developers didn't previously care over the overseas market to much because the Japanese market was powerful enough to sell for exclusively, but that the situation has now changed.
Category: Gaming ConsolesNintendo DS Record Sales In 2007 was written by:Author:David JonesAdded: Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:56:36 -0500 This Article Has Been Read 391 times View all David Jones's articlesAbout the Author: ConsolesMarket.com, has thousands of consoles and games listed on the site at amazing prices. Come and see whats on offer from a range of carefully selected merchants. http://www.consolesmarket.com |
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