Cooking Mama ships half million units on DS

It's the story of the little franchise that could as Majesco announced Cooking Mama on the DS has shipped a half million units. The DS game, and its Wii counterpart, have been responsible for significantly boosting Majesco's bottom line. Despite control issues with the Wii version, which Majesco addressed soon after, the DS version is definitely a shining example of solid DS control design.

With a sequel in the works, it doesn't look like Cooking Mama is slowing down anytime soon. Although there isn't an official release yet, Todd Greenwald, an analyst with Nollenberger Capital, expects the sequel Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends to be out by this holiday season. He goes on to say that Majesco may have found a gold mine in the casual market and will probably be focusing more effort on taking its relationship with Japanese developers to bring more casual titles to the Wii and DS. He expects Cooking Mama 2 could generate $20 million or more for the company. As Mama would say in her butchered accent, "Wonderful!"