Nintendo DS ships 100 million units

By GamesIndustry International Published 11 March, 2009

83 games have done over 1m units.

The Nintendo DS handheld has shipped over 100 million units worldwide as of 6th March 2009, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

The milestone comes ahead of the release of the latest in the series, the DSi, due in Europe and the US on 3rd April.

As of December, there are 83 DS titles which have shipped over one million units each, seven of those shipping upwards of 10 million copies.

The original DS launched in early 2005 in Europe, followed by the slimmer DS Lite. The DSi features two cameras, and the ability to record, manipulate and play sound files.

Check out Eurogamer's thoughts on the DSi launch elsewhere on the site.

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Comments (25) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #1 3 years ago

    DSI seems to be a stealth reason just to raise the price of the DS, the fact that it costs more than a PSP now is quite wrong.

  • Zomoniac #2 3 years ago

    Well done. Now stop shipping them and start making some decent games.

  • DFawkes #3 3 years ago

    At least I can't complain about no DS games, unlike certain other handhelds that I had - not that I did, I was happy with the PSP selection too. But DS really has a great line up if you know what to look for.
    Edited by DFawkes at 11/03/09 @ 16:44

  • schnide #4 3 years ago

    Last week, a middle-aged woman I work with bought two DS consoles and two R4 cartridges for her son's birthdays.

    She is unlikely to ever buy a legitimate copy of a game, so I hope Nintendo make a profit on the consoles (and that developers don't need much to live on).

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #5 3 years ago

    From what ive seen most people end up with R4 cartridges without even knowing, i know a few grandmas that have bought DS's off ebay for there grandchildren that come with "100 games".

    Also its now more expensive than an xbox 360 lol

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #6 3 years ago

    Wow. If ever a stat comprehensively smashed in the face the myth that piracy kills consoles it's this one:

    Roughly one DS game in every 30 has sold over a million copies.

    That's despite DS flashcarts being available within a few months of release, and now currently selling for less than £5. That's despite the DS being the only current console whose games can be easily downloaded direct from websites without even having to know how to use torrent programs. That's despite the DS being the only console that doesn't need its hardware or firmware modified to run pirate games.

    So enough with the idiot honking. Piracy doesn't kill consoles or developers. The low costs and potentially huge returns of DS development make it the place to be. Whether that's despite piracy or because of it, it sure as hell hasn't killed the DS.

  • Burkey123 #7 3 years ago

    100 million and the DSi hasn't even been released in America or Europe yet!!??
    Nintendo should be very proud. A crowning achievement. Does anyone know the lifetime sales of Zelda:pH?

  • afray #8 3 years ago

    @Rev: just to be absolutely clear, you're not saying that piracy is ok because 3% of DS titles sell over a million units, are you?

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #9 3 years ago

    What I'm saying is that piracy doesn't kill consoles, or developers, or publishers, or anything else. These figures seem to prove that once and for all.

  • afray #10 3 years ago

    @Rev: Yep I'll accept that 3% of DS games are very successful despite piracy, but can I get a, "Piracy is never ok no matter how successful the game or company" just for the record? Your comments seem very ambiguous and I wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong impression.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #11 3 years ago

    "can I get a, "Piracy is never ok no matter how successful the game or company" just for the record?"

    No, you certainly cannot. It would be a facile, nebulous and wildly inaccurate comment.

  • afray #12 3 years ago

    Rev: Oh OK, I would discuss this with you but I've got to go bit-torrent the world of stuart premium content.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #13 3 years ago

    Best of luck!

  • canIdoyabombsforya #14 3 years ago

    Rev. Stuart Campbell
    "Wow. If ever a stat comprehensively smashed in the face the myth that piracy kills consoles it's this one:
    Roughly one DS game in every 30 has sold over a million copies.
    That's despite DS flashcarts being available within a few months of release, and now currently selling for less than £5"

    What a ridiculously poor argument.
    Even you surely cannot believe that DS flashcarts were as popular "within a few months of release". They have only become mainstream in the last couple of years at the very most. I remember telling a mate about them two years ago and he didnt have a clue what I was on about, but in the last 6 months DS ROM DVDs have been doing the rounds in his office. If they'd been mainstream and £5 from the word go Nintendo shareholders would have been far far less happy.




  • canIdoyabombsforya #15 3 years ago

    GamesProgrammer
    "DSI seems to be a stealth reason just to raise the price of the DS, the fact that it costs more than a PSP now is quite wrong"

    Not as wrong as Sony shareholders are feeling right now.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #16 3 years ago

    "Even you surely cannot believe that DS flashcarts were as popular "within a few months of release"."

    I didn't say that, so I don't really see the point of you arguing with it.

  • Raya #17 3 years ago

    Zomoniac 'Well done. Now stop shipping them and start making some decent games.'

    What? You saying DS has no decent games? Hello - earth calling Zomoniac!

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #18 3 years ago

    "but what about the next generation who have been brought up on not paying for games and thinking that is fine? "

    OMG WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

    How old are you? Gamers have been brought up on pirated games since kids swapped C90s with 30 Spectrum games on them at a time in playgrounds in 1982, and guess what - the industry hasn't been destroyed yet. In fact, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

    The PS1 was incredibly easy to pirate and the industry got bigger. The DS is incredibly easy to pirate and the industry gets bigger. EVERY SINGLE big leap in the size of the games industry has coincided with the leading format of the time being easy to pirate. Even total cretins should be able to do the sums by now. People can be as pious and self-righteous as they want about piracy being "wrong", but you have to be a complete fucking idiot to still pretend that it damages the games industry.

  • afray #19 3 years ago

    People can be as pious and as indignant as they want about piracy not damaging the games industry, but you have to be a complete fucking idiot to still pretend that piracy is somehow excused by this fact.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #20 3 years ago

    Piously and self-righteously said!

    Most sane people, of course, would agree that a victimless crime is the definition of "excusable".

  • afray #21 3 years ago

    I know I should leave it, and that you're just a troll, but your smug hypocrisy infuriates me.

    I'm in the middle of a very long stretch of 7-day weeks to get a new game out of the door, and I can't stand that you think you're entitled to the fruits of my overtime, to the evenings I've spent in work away from my loved ones, and to the headaches I've induced from staring at code for too long.

    But that's orthogonal to the argument. In fact so are stats about how successful or massive the video games industry is. It's not about lost sales or revenue.

    The simple fact is that if someone has created something, anything, and you /want/ to experience it, you have no right to help yourself to it without their permission. If their permission is exchanged for money, you either pay that or you don't get their creation.

    The fact that the author may never know that you stole their work as immaterial as a woman not knowing that the man behind her was lucky enough to get away with taking a photo up her skirt.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #22 3 years ago

    "I'm in the middle of a very long stretch of 7-day weeks to get a new game out of the door, and I can't stand that you think you're entitled to the fruits of my overtime, to the evenings I've spent in work away from my loved ones, and to the headaches I've induced from staring at code for too long."

    What an extraordinary thing to extrapolate from what I said. You know that I've been a developer myself, yes? You know that I've put in 52-hour days working on a game followed immediately by a 200-mile drive, hallucinating from tiredness, to deliver the review copy for a magazine deadline, only to then have the magazine ask me to field questions from angry readers about a "bug" in another of our games that was ONLY present in pirate beta versions someone had leaked, yes?

    The fact that I've worked in and around the games industry for 20 years, and spent at least 15 of those years investigating and researching piracy, is what gives me the confidence to say what I do on the subject. After a decade-and-a-half of actually looking at the real, empirical facts, the level of respect I attribute to some pompous wanker droning on about what's "right" is as close to zero as is possible to measure.

    "Troll"? Go and fuck yourself with a fencepost.

  • afray #23 3 years ago

    A troll. Or at worst, a salesman. You hide behind facts and figures but won't go beyond that to be pinned down on any specific point. Putting your fingers in your ears and shouting names doesn't equate to an adult discussion.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #24 3 years ago

    Yeah, I'd be embarrassed too if I was you.

  • wizbob #25 3 years ago

    afray:

    The fact that the author may never know that you stole their work as immaterial as a woman not knowing that the man behind her was lucky enough to get away with taking a photo up her skirt.
    ignore poster


    I think you should shut up now before you sink any further.