During the last ten years of the home console race, Nintendo have made as many enemies in Europe as they have fans. The company that once stormed the industry with an iron fist of dominance now often resides in the back of most people’s minds, behind both the new boys SONY and Microsoft. However, things are slightly different in the handheld market.

            No-one can deny Nintendo’s prowess for designing, and sustaining, the most respectable and desirable systems available for gaming-on-the-go. Since the launch of the original Game Boy, no-one has even been able to come close to Nintendo’s continuous reign. Even SONY’s PSP – the biggest hope that any company had managed to deliver to the market – failed to purloin Nintendo’s latest success story, the NintendoDS.

            Only to add fuel-to-the-fire, Nintendo have announced that, contrary to many previous iterations of the handheld market, it’s not only the NintendoDS hardware that’s making waves. In previous generations, while the hardware continually sold in the millions, the software generally only ever picked-up a 4:1 ratio at best – four games sold, for every console. Nintendo have announced that this trend has changed with the NintendoDS; changed drastically in-fact.

“Since its launch in March 2005 the NintendoDS has enjoyed meteoric success with a staggering seven million consoles sold across Europe and six Nintendo DS games breaking the coveted one million sales mark with ease.

Nintendo’s Touch! Generations range has sparked the imagination of people around the world.  Sales of the innovative software continue to soar across Europe with Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? shattering the one million mark. Animal Crossing: Wild World, which lets you experience a joyful and exciting second life, has also attracted over a million people to its world and puppy phenomenon Nintendogs has sold over 4 million copies in Europe.

Nintendo’s gaming titles have seen similar success with the portly plumber, Mario, enjoying three huge hits with New Super Mario Bros., and Super Mario 64 DS both breaking the one million sales mark, and Mario KartDS selling over 1.5 million copies.”

 Laurent Fischer, European Marketing Director for Nintendo commented, “We are delighted by the success of the NintendoDS and NintendoDS Lite and especially pleased to see that we have exceeded the one million mark with games that appeal to both non-gamers and traditional gamers. Nintendo is proud of its role in expanding the gaming market and we hope to continue this success with the launch of Wii in Europe in December.”

Since the release of titles like Nintendogs and Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? Nintendo has seen sales to non-traditional markets increase drastically, with an impressive 44% of NintendoDS owners being female.  With a host of new and exciting Touch! Generations titles scheduled to launch in the near future, Nintendo hopes to continue to reach all new audiences.”

And it’s not just Nintendo’s First-Party games that have excelled on the NintendoDS this year; Third-Party games are also enjoying success. John Parkes, EMEA Marketing Director, UBi Soft commented, “The NintendoDS has opened up a wealth of opportunities for us this year and we are thrilled with the sales performances of our key games. We are looking forward to publishing a whole host of new and exciting software for the NintendoDS as we move into 2007.”

Kev J.

23/11/06

Return to the Articles Archive 2006 here.

 Each of these articles has been written either independently of Electronic Theatre or by an external viewer. The opinions discussed in these articles in no way reflects the opinions of Electronic Theatre.

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