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04 Jan 2006
Nintendo has reported strong sales of its Nintendo DS handheld gaming platform as it attempts to keep its head above water in the face of fierce competition from Sony and Microsoft.
The DS has sold over five million units in Japan since its launch a year ago, according to Nintendo. Sales in the US and Canada were lower in proportion to the market size, at about four million units, and appear to have tailed off since the launch.
Nintendo recently reported a 21 per cent fall in net income for the six months from March 2005, and a six per cent fall in sales revenue.
These figures compare to reported North American sales of the Nintendo DS's main rival, Sony's PlayStation Portable, of 2.7 million between its launch in March and the beginning of December.
Nintendo claims that its two handheld gaming products, the DS and the older Gameboy Advance, which sold 4.6 million in North America, hold 78 per cent of the North American gaming market.
The DS sold strongly at the time of its launch, with over one million in the first month in the US alone.
Although DS sales have fallen sharply since then, popular game sales appear to be holding up well. Nintendo claims to have sold 1.5 million units of the Nintendogs game in the US since August.
The company hopes to keep sales buoyant with promotional campaigns like free Wi-Fi access for Nintendo DS users at 6,000 branches of McDonald's across the US.
Nintendo tends to focus on simpler, more friendly games with a shallow learning curve, in contrast to the darker, more complex offerings which dominate sales on other gaming platforms in the West.
These are traditionally more popular in the company's home market of Japan, although they have been predicted to appeal to untapped groups, such as women, elsewhere.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said last month that video games have become "overly sophisticated, turning off many users".
The company is gearing up for the release of its next-generation full-sized gaming console, the Revolution, in the face of strong competition from Microsoft's Xbox 360, and Sony's forthcoming Playstation 3.
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PSP win? Maybe... I dunno
Okay, I'm a Nintendo fan myself, but to steve the guy with the psp; when people talk about ps2 xbox and gcn hardware, do people bother that the psp has been out about 1-2 years longer than the xbox and gcn? No - 6 months is nothing - compared to the ps2s advantage over gcn and xbox - people just dont care... Secondly, since when is psp a "Mini-Laptop"??? Right... It can surf the internet - so can my phone - yeah, its good, but a laptop? No... Laptops do much more. "MP3 Player: 50$ Portable DVD Player: 50-60$ Small Laptop: 150$ Handheld game with Groundbreaking graphics: (at least) 150$ thats: 350 or 360 dollars plus tax. (plus for 100$ more you can put it all on your tv, making it a complete home theater and computer, and game system.)" 1. MP3 players have morememory - psp has no onboard memory (I'm pretty sure...), and only comes with a 32 meg memory stick duo - so, you wanna listen to 10 tracks over on repeat - fine, but wanna listen to ur music collection, which iPods are intended for? It'll set you back $100 for a memory stick pro duo 1 gig! 1 gig?!?! when you can get 30 gig ipods for a little bit more $. altogether, a psp will set you back $350 to convert it to a 1 gig mp3. 2. Portable DVD player? Yeah, but they're somewhat... redundant - using propietory umds mean that you'll double up your movie collection to have a UMD copy - Why? Its the same price as a dvd but its on a propietory disc that can ONLY BE READ on the psp??? DVDs can be read on any computer with a dvd, or over anyones house. You visit a mate, "hey, man, wanna watch this umd?" *Whip out your psp, and watch your favourite movie on a 6cm sceen, while infront of you, your friend has a home theater system with 5.1 dolby surround sound and wide sceen hd tv. No, You bring around a DVD you wanna watch - instead of putting your psp on the desk and pretending its a miniture scaled working model proper home entertainment system. Yeah, it is a portable home entertainment system, but like i said, you probably will double up on ur dvd collection - and for what? Watching it once in a while. How many times in a day do you have where you are waiting for a bus or doing something where you can whip out ur psp and umd and watch a 2 hr movie? (Before the battery dies)Where do you usually watch movies? At home. What are you doing when your watching these movies? Nothing - thats why you are watching them. You watch movies to pass time, when you are doing nothing at home - sure, there'll be times when your outdoors doing nothing - but if you have one umd and watch it whenever you are waiting for a bus, you'll watch the intro credits about 20,000 times, and never get into the meat of the movie - a movie has to be watched in its full - you don't walk halfway out in the cinemas (duh, a bit obvious), but if you whip out a umd when your waiting for a few minutes, you'll memorize the intro part of the movie. Unlike tv, movies need to be watched in its full - imagine watching the boring intro into die-hard 20000 times and never seeing the good parts. If its a loooong car trip - sure, you'll fit in one movie and the battery will die (spinning a disc constantly murders the battery), after which, needs a charging before you can do anything. 3. A laptop?!? Oh no, a laptop does a lot more than a psp does. Psp can view images, movies and music, that only scratches the surface of what a laptop can. Mini Laptop? What does that even mean? Well, if thats what you mean, fair enough, but viewing pix, playing music, videos and surfing the net are only some funtions of a laptop. 4. Handheld game with groundbreaking graphics; well, yes, ps2 graphics - okay, better than ds' - but psp haven't had any... "Killer apps", or good games - that is evident from the 2 'mil sales mark - most games on psp you can get on ps2, and you dont have to fork out extra cash for the psp port. Ds has exclusive games which make use of the touch screen, mic, double screen. 5. Yeah, you can get after-market psp add ons to make it tv enabled, which void ur warrenty unless you get that psp2tv one that uses a camera inside a blackbox... That just sounds completely redundant - you get a 200 portable system only to buy a 3rd party psp-tv adapter to watch psp on ur tv? Thats redundant! If you want to watch movies, use a ps2 or a dvd player - not a psp plugged in and charging and plugged into the tv through a 3rd party projector, playing a propiertory umd disc - for what? VHS quality (Yes, the psp has got near-dvd quality, but using an after-market camera to capture the psps screen and post it on ur tv does make the quality go down - like watching a psp movie filmed on a camcorder). See, by trying to cover all basis of entertainment, psp has shot itself in the foot. A memory stick pro duo 1 gig for 100 bucks extra??? Unless your music collection consists of about ten 3 meg mp3s, you need more room. Movie playback - sure good feature - but handhelds like gameboys were designed to be powered up, played and powered off - pick up and play - by that, I mean, pick it up, play it for a minute, for an hour. Playing some games are in-depth, meaning its harder to pick up and play. WarioWare touched is an example of a game where you can pick it up, play some microgames and finish in a second. Movies are the same - you cant simply start a movie and stop the movie 5 mins in. If it were tv, or a 4 minute clip - fine, but a 2 hr movie? Whats the point of watching the first 5 mins? Its not pick up and play, its pick up, watch for 2 hrs and put down again. That is why I think the ds is selling better - when on the run, pick up and play (Warioware, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing DS, Polarium, Mario Kart DS, Metroid Prime Pinball) are better than other games/umd movies that arent pick up and play. Buy a ds and an ipod, and save yourself money in the end...
Posted by: Nfan 07 Jan 2006
Australian Retailers Dumping Nintendo
Whilst Australia is a tiny market compared with Japan & the US, it is disappointing to see the top 5 Australian retailers dump Nintendo to focus on Microsoft Xbox and Sony PSP & Playstation. Nintendo?s presence in video game specialty retailers; such as EB, Gamesmen and Games Wizards has also dwindled to the point, that most stores hold no more than a dozen Nintendo titles. As a disappointed DS and Game cube owner, I feel that Nintendo has a steep up hill climb to get their revolution seeded. I for one won?t be taking up their console this time round.
Posted by: Gary 05 Jan 2006
DS now at 13 million
In japan the DS and PSP launched at the same time, and the DS has sold twice as many units as the PSP there, so its very unlikely the PSP will come out on top. Also today these figures were updated with european numbers DS now stands at 13 million sold, 3.5 million in Europe
Posted by: Avinash_Tyagi 05 Jan 2006
So the DS is winning
What this article fails to mention is PSP hardware sales in the US have been lower than those of the DS and in Japan the DS has sold more than twice the number of the PSP
Posted by: Avinash_Tyagi 04 Jan 2006
PSP
i am an owner of a psp. wait! keep reading this is not a "psp is better than ds" speach, this is just looking at the facts. I believe that the psp, though losing slighly now, will come out on top. Yes i know what your thinking? "but that article just said psp only had 2.7mil and do had 4 mil in america. well you are forgetting the ds had a 6 month advantage over the psp. think. PSP has been out for half the time for ds and has passed the halfway mark for ds's sales now. if the psp had lauched when the ds did, its sales would be estimated at 5.4 million. but anyway. I just want to say, the psp if for the more mature, "jump into the action" gamers, while the ds is for more of the "ok lets sit down and play" gamers. Plus for all of you complaining about the psp's price. think about it. A psp is: MP3 Player: 50$ Portable DVD Player: 50-60$ Small Laptop: 150$ Handheld game with Groundbreaking graphics: (at least) 150$ thats: 350 or 360 dollars plus tax. (plus for 100$ more you can put it all on your tv, making it a complete home theater and computer, and game system.) but the ds has its good sides as well. It has wi-fi now, also it has innovative game design and of course the touch scree. overall its like i said before, ds if for E to Teen PSP is for T-M c' ya
Posted by: steve, the guy with the psp 04 Jan 2006