DS Lite Hits 200,000 in 10 Days

Other numbers suggest that the casual game craze is catching hold in Europe too.

The DS Lite has been a phenomenon in Japan but without official numbers it's been difficult to get a bead on how well it's doing in Europe so far. Nintendo has come clean and things are looking good for the sleek handheld.

The DS Lite has sold 200,000 units across Europe in its first 10 days on sale, Nintendo said on Tuesday. This compares well with the 136,500 units it sold in the first two days on sale in the US but is far short of the 130,000-or-so units it's selling in DS-mad Japan every week.

Including the original DS, or DS Phat as some have started calling it, there are now 5 million DSs out there in Europe.

Nintendo also dropped figures for its Touch! Generations games, which are built for people who wouldn't ordinarily play games.

The biggest success here is, of course, Nintendogs, which has now sold more than 3 million copies, but things are looking good too for Animal Crossing: Wild World, which has sold more than 600,000 copies across Europe, and Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?, which has sold more than 250,000 copies.

The biggest validation of Nintendo's strategy of trying to grow the audience by making new kinds of experience comes from the kind of people now buying games.

"During Nintendo DS Lite launch weekend," Nintendo's Laurent Fischer said, "retailers across Europe said that they had never seen such a vast array of different people buying the product, everyone from business men to young women to grandfathers!"

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games