Nintendo certainly struck the jackpot with their little dual-screened device, didn't they? With 21 million DS units having been sold worldwide, you can bet that the Japanese giant is enjoying every last penny spilling forth from the one-armed consumer. In the celebratory press release, Nintendo points out that what they've accomplished in under two years easily trumps the 1 million iPods Apple shifted in 19 months. Apparently, that equates to 23 DS systems sold per minute ever since the November 2004 launch.As you may vengefully recall, we accused Nintendo of having suspiciously puffy sleeves in our last game of marketing poker. You'll be happy to learn then that there are no such shenanigans here and that the numbers check out based on a 24-hour business day. We suspect that if the day were any longer, Nintendo would make such a huge amount of money that they'd be taken into a back room, sternly questioned by Joe Pesci and ... this casino allegory is going nowhere.
(Page 1) Reader Comments
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I hope the Wii is this successful.
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I wanted so much to buy NTDOY shares when it was $5-6... now it's around $24. They be winning.
Ditto on hoping for Wii's success.
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Funny that I haven't had a chance to see anyone standing on the DS shelf in any UK stores or people playing it in the public.
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This one is 24 hours because it's international, and a shop is always open somewhere.
Pretty Dumb Joystiq.
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Back on topic -- I would be very interested to learn how many out of the 21 million are the elusive "casual gamers" Nintendo's been chasing after.
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unless you were planning on buying Nintendo stock in the mid 90s i dont think you could have grabbed it for $5-6
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when the ds has been out for 6+ years, maybe it will
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Actually it was for a few weeks/months a few years ago probably around 2003, one of their mediocre years, including a bad E3. That's why I wanted to jump on it so badly.
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Yeah, the 4th Gen iPod sold 32 million in ONE year. the Fifth Gen sold 14 million (that's 2/3 of what DS has sold over all) in THREE MONTHS. So no, that's not really a fair comparison. But, I guess it sounds good in a press release to the unknowing general public. Personally I'm happy with my DS AND my iPod!
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Eh, that's kinda an unfair comparison, that's the first generation iPod to nintendo's 4th gen handheld…
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Umm...Didn't Apple sell 1 Million "5G" iPods and iPod Nanos? Think before you speak.
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I think at least the non-gaming friends and relatives of DS owners purchase/know about the casual gaming front of the DS
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http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/24/nintendo-sells-21-million-ds-systems-worldwide/
Complete with commentary. Which, I have to say, I enjoy (always, and that includes your $0.02). I don't expect you to post press releases without it. But Mr. Snow already commented on this press release. Hence my question.
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Charlie M?! You make me pop your f**king eye out of your head to protect that piece of s**t! Charlie M, you dumb motherf**ker!!
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In its first year, the iPod was ONLY FOR MACS. The PC version didn't come out until later. Back then, only about 15 million people had macs modern enough to work with the ipod, so it couldn't have possibly beat the DS's numbers.
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I initially wanted to do it before this E3, but now i'm too late. I want to do it quick before the Wii comes out.
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Eh, that's kinda an unfair comparison, that's the first generation iPod to nintendo's 4th gen handheld…
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Umm...Didn't Apple sell 1 Million "5G" iPods and iPod Nanos? Think before you speak."
Wrong. YOU think before you speak. As I said in my previous post, the 5th Gen iPod and iPod nano sold 14, that's FOURTEEN MILLION units in the first three months they were out. See:
"• Total iPods sold all-time: 42 million.
• 14 million iPods sold in quarter. 32 million in 2005.
That was from their 1st quarter FY2006 earnings report. You can read the whole report at the following link:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8114/
So. Thank before you Speak. :P
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Thanks for the reminder on thinking, I did, although, I'm gonna have to ask you to read before you reply…
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"6. Urgh - the 'dodgy numbers' of the Mario US sales was based on shops being open for 12 hours a day, which is already generous."
a "12-hour" business day makes perfect sense and isn't "generous" if you are say talking about North America only. which has a 4 hour spread end to end. so with normal 9-5 businesses... from end to end of the continent you'll have *something* open from 5am to 9pm.
that said... maybe i don't know what you are even talking about with the 12 hour days... but most gaming shops here are open from 10a-10p. and i'm hardly in a metropolis or anything.
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