14 DAY TRIAL // Nintendo has announced that the DS, the handheld gaming platform it produces, has just gone over the 100 million units sold mark. Although the company does not know exactly where the unit that pushed the Nintendo DS over the milestone was sold, Nintendo says that it happened on March 6. Presumably, a few thousand DS consoles have been sold since then.
The number of consoles sold means that the Nintendo DS is now in the same league as the Game Boy, whose count includes sales of the Game Boy Color, the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. Sony must be pretty jealous to see its domination of the last ten years destroyed by Japanese rival Nintendo.
Reggie Fils-Aim, who is the head of Nintendo of America, has stated that “We are grateful that people of all ages continue to respond to our products and we will continue to look for ways to please current gamers and create new ones.” The success of the gaming consoles has also spawned giant videogame successes. 83 Nintendo DS games have now sold more than 1 million units and seven games have gone over the 10 million mark in sales.
The Nintendo DS was initially released in November 2004 and it was a success from the moment it was launched. The first minor hardware revision came in the form of the DS Lite, which is still sold on all major markets. Nintendo has released another hardware update, in the form of the DSi, which has two cameras and loses the Game Boy Advance slot. That variant is at the moment only available in Japan, but in 2009, it is set to also arrive in North America and in Europe.
Meanwhile, Nintendo reveals that it plans to rise the price for which the Nintendo Wii is sold to all retailers in the United Kingdom. However, this doesn't mean that the console will be sold to gamers for more, as retailers could opt to keep the current price but only make a small profit on each console sold. Nintendo has said that “Due to the severe and continuing depreciation of the pound, we are, unfortunately, having [sic] to raise our trade price to UK retailers of Wii hardware.”