DS Appealing to more Female Gamers than Ever
Nintendo ruled the roost at the E3 Games Conference yesterday.
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime speculated worldwide DS sales will grow to 100 million by the end of the current fiscal year in March 2009. Spouting plenty of impressive figures, he boasted that currently two out of every three handhelds sold in America are DS.
Combined sales of Wii and DS have netted the company $5 billion to date, but Fils-Aime says he’s still “not close to being satisfied”.
2007 was expected to be the peak sale period for DS but sales in 2008 are up 12 per cent on last year. “Hardware sales are always driven by key software franchises, and this spring that key franchise was Pokemon,” he added.
The Pokemon franchise alone has shifted 180 million titles to date.
When Nintendo set out its plans to single-handedly open the games market to brand new audiences before the DS launch back in 2004, their were more than a few chuckles. Less than four years later, however, it’s abundantly clear that the visionary gaming giant has achieved precisely what it set out to.
As part of its E3 2008 presentation, Nintendo confirmed that DS Lite is the first console ever to successfully manage the battle of the sexes and appeal equally to both male and female players. Whilst sales in 2006 already saw 30 per cent of the machines being purchased by or for females, by the end of 2007 this figure had risen to an outstanding 48 percent.
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