The Shrine

I honestly thought the PSP would be wasting the DS by now in 2005 Japanese sales. Last year, due to a later release and supply shortages, the PSP only sold about 200,000 units versus the 1.2M units of the DS. Then the supply came and they POUNDED the DS in sales. Considering the crap list of titles for the DS and the MUCH more powerful PSP (not to mention a much larger supply of games), it looked like the DS was going to be the Nintendo handheld to succumb to the competition. Not so, apparently. Not sure if this has to do with Nintendogs (all three games have been in the top 10 in Japan for about a month now) or the new colours (you can get blue and pink in Japan; white too, I think), but amazingly, the DS has been POUNDING the PSP in weekly sales since these releases, and it came out about 3 weeks before the PSP. By next week, at this rate, they'll catch the PSP. Here are the figures:

http://www.the-magicbox.com/topten.htm

I think this proves one thing: backwards compatability is the way to go. There's no way the DS survives like this without GBA compatability (I'm pretty sure it's out selling the PSP here as well, but no hard figures). The PS2 proved it and all the Gameboys and DS are proving it as well. People are simply buying the DS to play their GBA games and a few DS games they want and just wait for the next game. Also, the $200 US (more in Japan) price point it just flat-out too high. Will they get the mp3 and movie download crowd? I severly doubt it as I don't think people see it as anything other than a glorified Gameboy.

Also, this may severly put a dent in Sony's advantage on the console front. With the PSX, they had the third party and "cool" thing going. With the PS2 they had the backwards compatability and DVD player to get market penetration. Of course, they've had INCREDIBLE hits to help them over the hump (I call it genius on the part of their computer department). But now they're missing all those elements (Xbox has "cool" here, both the systems should be as powerful as the PS3, and they're all backwards compatable). So, now they have to rely solely on games. I'm curious how it's going to turn out.

The PSP needs a big game to really get the sales going. It's a great system, but it doesn't have that major app.

I still can't wait for Animal Crossing, Metroid, Final Fantasy 3, Harvest Moon, Castlevania, and Lunar Genesis. There are a few interesting strategy games coming out too, Age of Empires, Advance Wars, and Shogun; I might look into getting one or a few of those.

As for sales on the DS, as it stands, Nintendo had 6 million units shipped and over five million sold by March 31st. Sony had 3.2 million units shipped and 2 million sold by the same date. Nintendo is incredibly aggressive in the handheld market, they learned their lesson for not being nearly aggressive enough back in 1996/97.


Anyways, besides games, the DS also has other functions that I find useful: it's my alarm clock, and soon it will be my encyclopedia. It's actually a fairly good alarm clock, it starts off quiet and gets louder and louder.