Nintendo ships 2 million DSes
Dual-screen handheld reaches milestone faster than expected; Nintendo boosting production to meet demand.
TOKYO--Nintendo today announced that it has shipped more than 2 million DS units in Japan and America. The dual-screen handheld made its debut in America on November 21 and went on sale two weeks later in Japan on December 2. The American launch saw more than a half a million units sold within the first week of release, while the Japanese launch saw the same number of units sold in just four days.
Nintendo has also announced that the handheld has sold more than 1 million units alone in America. In Japan, sales of the DS have not quite reached 1 million yet, but the company expects to reach that number by December 24. Nintendo plans to ship 2.8 million units of its handheld by the end of the year in both Japan and America to meet holiday demand, which represents an increase of 40 percent more units than Nintendo originally planned to ship.
The DS announcement comes nine days after Nintendo's rival Sony launched its PSP into the handheld market in Japan. Although the PSP has been selling out across the country, its sales numbers were less impressive than the DS's because of a smaller number of units available at launch. Nintendo shipped 570,000 units for its Japanese launch, as opposed to the smaller figure of fewer than 200,000 units for Sony's PSP launch. The PSP will be released in North America in the first quarter of 2005.
The DS will test another market when it's released in Europe in the first quarter of 2005.
Fonte:Spoiler: