Christmas Countdown: Nintendo DS vs DSi
The Nintendo DSi is the follow on to the hugely successful Nintendo DS handheld games console. When the DSi launched, Nintendo anticipated that the range of new features bundled into this next-gen console would set the markets alight with eager buyers. Unfortunately, they were wrong!
There’s no arguing that the DSi has some pretty cool features (webcam, built in audio player, DSi shop, etc) but sales of the previous version, the Nintendo DS, has proved pretty resilient. But this is good news for owners of the DS and Nintendo alike; it would be fair to say that any games console maker wants to get us all onto the very latest version of their consoles. The reason? Profit. Companies like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft etc spend a lot of money developing new software and hardware in order to keep up with the demands of gamers but these products sell at a premium price which brings the makers big profit margins. As time goes on, and technologies become ’so yesterday’, the retailers need to drop prices. Now you can understand the huge advertising campaigns on the television and internet when a new console or game launches.
So which version of the DS will be the big winner this Christmas? The DSi has certainly racked up some impressive figures since it was launched just over 6 months ago: about 7 million units sold. Then again, when you look at the number of DS’s sold to date you’ll see it’s hit over 107 million consoles sold! Now that is an impressive figure. In fact, the number of DS consoles sold outstrips the combined figures for the Wii, XBox and PS…combined.
There’s no doubt we’ll see a strong demand for all things Nintendo related this Christmas (models such as the Nintendo pink DS are still very big sellers) but it’s not very likely that the DSi will outperform the DS…nOt yet, at least.
Tags: christmas, console, ds, dsi, games, handheld, nintendo, pink