Japan: 350,000 Nintendo DS through-sells on 4 days

DarthWufei said:
Oh kaching, leave the cheese on the cheeseburgers. :P

If it helps any, here are the sales for other consoles/portables during their first week launch in Japan. Sadly, it doesn't have the total number of units that was shipped (Like the 150k DC, etc). Plus they're just numbers, you really can't compare any two system's sales as the variables (launch lineup, price, features, time of release,competition) are so widely different. Just fun with numbers to see where the DS ranks up.

Gameboy Color 155,774
Dreamcast 101,490
Wonder Swan 102,655
PS2 630,552
PSone 34,175
Wonder Swan Color 145,975
GBA 611,504
Gamecube 133,719
XBOX 123,929
GBA SP 117,859

http://web.archive.org/web/20011109052558/http://www.famitsu.com/game/column/2001/09/21/suji.html
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Awesome. That puts DS just under PS2 and GBA.
 
Famitsu/Enterbrain are sure to come out with lower figures. It'll be the GameCube launch number arguments all over again. :P
 
DarthWufei said:
Oh kaching, leave the cheese on the cheeseburgers. :P
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Eh, you and others wiping your brow in relief that the DS sold well out of the gate filled that role, Darth.

And I'm not so sure that your launch week numbers are accurate. I believe the PS2 sold closer to a million at launch. Not sure about the others.
 
Dang, I had no idea the DS' number was that solid then. Obviously just under 500k is a great number but to come in as the 3rd best launch in such a substantial period of time is impressive.
 
Even 350,000 is undeniably impressive when looking at that chart. Though obviously exact comparisons can't be drawn.
 
kaching said:
Eh, you and others wiping your brow in relief that the DS sold well out of the gate filled that role, Darth.

And I'm not so sure that your launch week numbers are accurate. I believe the PS2 sold closer to a million at launch. Not sure about the others.
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You obviously didn't get my meaning. You think selling 300-400k a week (what I was thinking it would do) is me being worried about DS not selling well? Those are already decent sales. I already said that I didn't have any doubts DS would hit a million units worldwide by the end of the week. The US sales alone would have been enoough to allow room for lower Japan numbers (300kish) as I would have expceted the DS to do at least 200k last week here in the states. So, wiping my brow? And secondly, if you expect some of the people here to say blatant things like "The DS will do awesome in Japan at launch, no need to worry," and don't expect the trolls to come in with the ball bashing and PSP launch mentionings, you haven't been in many of the DS topics. Take a look at the Japanese launch thread and the first sales thread for Japan.

To the PS2 figures. They aren't mine, they're Famitsus. Take it up with them. Though I can say I believe the GBA and SP numbers are to the mark. IGN has news stories on those that give out about the same figures.

EDIT: I went ahead a looked around to do more research. You're definitely right, it dido a million. Perhaps these numbers are sales in the first day?
 
kaching said:
Why would anybody be concerned that the DS might not sell well in its first week on the market? There hasn't been a major new piece of game hardware from one of the usual suspects that hasn't sold well at launch in recent memory, thanks to early adopters and loyal fans.
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According to some the DS isn't even a major piece of hardware. It was supposed to be a stop-gap 3rd tier, next Virtual Boy.
 
With such a weak launch, I really don't know what people are playing. But I guess the American launch was considerably worse than Japan's.
 
Darth, as usual, you're overreacting to what I've said. Concern for good sales is certainly expressed when you say things like, "Even with the PSP launch looming..." and "...hoping we'd have around a 200k-300k sell through here this week." All I'm saying is the situation didn't require such concern, as the DS was virtually guaranteed to sell out of initial launch shipments quickly.
 
If Nintendo isn't really taking a loss on the hardware, if they have cheaper media costs (evidence by the Metroid demo's inclusion), and if the developer costs are substantially lower than the average console game, is there any reason the DS needs to sell more than a few million to be very profitable?
 
missAran said:
With such a weak launch, I really don't know what people are playing. But I guess the American launch was considerably worse than Japan's.
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Japanese lineup is gaming nirvana compared to what the US got.
 
missAran said:
With such a weak launch, I really don't know what people are playing. But I guess the American launch was considerably worse than Japan's.
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Weak launch? Warioware alone makes the launch lineup decent, above average, even.
 
missAran said:
With such a weak launch, I really don't know what people are playing. But I guess the American launch was considerably worse than Japan's.
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Considering that hardware sales seem greater than software sales, and there are people like the denizens of this board who bought multiple games, I'd say that means a fair percentage are right now using their DS as a high-class GBA with stereo speakers and Pictochat built in.
 
kaching said:
Darth, as usual, you're overreacting to what I've said. Concern for good sales is certainly expressed when you say things like, "Even with the PSP launch looming..." and "...hoping we'd have around a 200k-300k sell through here this week." All I'm saying is the situation didn't require such concern, as the DS was virtually guaranteed to sell out of initial launch shipments quickly.
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Overreacting maybe. I'm just a little tired of your critiquing of others people posts and thinking.

EDIT: If you want to continue this, please, let's take it to PM. There's been a little too much unneeded conflict in the DS and PSP threads.
 
aren't media create's numbers extrapolations of the total market based on limited data? if so, their initial numbers would be an estimate of the ds's total sell-through, rather than what it sold at the retailers they had surveyed, and the addition of more data shouldn't have bumped it up by 150k. i suspect foul play! i bet yamauchi mobilized his goons!
 
kaching said:
Darth, as usual, you're overreacting to what I've said. Concern for good sales is certainly expressed when you say things like, "Even with the PSP launch looming..." and "...hoping we'd have around a 200k-300k sell through here this week." All I'm saying is the situation didn't require such concern, as the DS was virtually guaranteed to sell out of initial launch shipments quickly.
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actually it was not. Weren't a lot of gaffer predicting a bomb? I didn't know how DSs would move in the States and in Japan til these numbers. Also... they're NOT limiting numbers like PSP hoping for a PS2 frenzy

All I can say for nintendo is Whew.
 
they're reporting bloomberg. Umm. yes. Still good.

490k or 513k. Good for 4 days. :) Keep on trucking. Nintendo has all the room to price cut and sell the monster. 10000 yen?

I hope they're not going to be cheap like GC in Japan and not do things (bundle..etc) to make the console competitive.
 
TheGreenGiant said:
they're reporting bloomberg. Umm. yes. Still good.
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I know they're quoting, but I thought their admission that Media Create excludes some large retailers, without estimating their sales, would perhaps straighten things out a bit? I don't know what I thought, but there's an article there.
 
1M worldwide so far when the PSP launches with 200K in Japan... interesting. Obviously the PSP's demand is going to far, far exceed that. If Nintendo and Sony each had a hypothetical unlimited number of systems available at launch the PSP would surely outsell the DS... but demand isn't everything. Unless Sony can recitfy their manufacturing/supply chain issues, Nintendo is going to continue to widen the gap for the rest of winter and into spring, even though there's probably more demand for the PSP.

What happens if March rolls around and there's 4.5M DSs sold, Vs. say 1.5 or 2M PSPs? Publishers can't and won't just ignore that. I suspect that once both consoles are widely available into March and April PSP sales will begin to edge out the DS, but it'll take a long long time for Sony to close that 2-3M gap.
 
GDJustin said:
1M worldwide so far when the PSP launches with 200K in Japan... interesting. Obviously the PSP's demand is going to far, far exceed that. If Nintendo and Sony each had a hypothetical unlimited number of systems available at launch the PSP would surely outsell the DS... but demand isn't everything.
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Doubt it. Sony likes to create false demand by only supplying so many units. If there were a lot of units to be had I bet the DS would still outsell it.
 
Well that's really neither here nor there. My post could be summed up to say "Nintendo has the upper hand right now." You're basically saying the same thing, only giving the DS even more credit than I am.
 
DarthWufei said:
Overreacting maybe. I'm just a little tired of your critiquing of others people posts and thinking.
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Maybe you're not cut out for life on the GAF...and as far as critiques go, this was a very mild one.

TheGreenGiant said:
actually it was not. Weren't a lot of gaffer predicting a bomb?
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Predicting it to bomb based on first week sales? I don't think so. In any case what does what a number of gaffers think have to do with a rational prediction of launch week sales? :P
 
kaching said:
Predicting it to bomb based on first week sales? I don't think so. In any case what does what a number of gaffers think have to do with a rational prediction of launch week sales? :P
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don't you know. The world revolves around GAF and sales age. :) All cool. It will be an interesting couple of months if you are a handheld gamer. I'll sit on the fence and wait - as much as I want a DS for some of the titles (And more so for the GBA feature). My Gbplayer says wait and see.
 
hey, it's even got you coming to virtual blows with offline friends like Amirox, so it was just a friendly suggestion for your own piece of mind.
 
1up said:
As of the close of business December 6, Nintendo has sold some 513,000 units of Nintendo DS hardware in Japan, Bloomberg News reports today. That figure comes from Nintendo's internal sales tracking.
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.
 
Forgotten Ancient said:
launch games were impressive (Mario Kart).
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Why do so many people bring up Mario Kart as a Japanese GBA launch title? It wasn't. The launch titles were Super Mario Advance, Kuru Kuru Kururin, Napoleon, and F-Zero.
 
CVXFREAK said:
Very nice sales. Not that far off from GBA and PS2.
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Not that far off form PS2. I think some are forgetting how big Playstation 2 launch was....


"March 4th: PlayStation 2 goes on sale in Japan. Some stores have sold out through preorder, others open early and hand units out on a first-come, first-served basis. Along Akihabara, Japan's "Electric Town," stores with a few hundred units have lines of several thousand people. Sales begin at 12:00 a.m. and all PlayStation 2 console inventory is sold out before stores officially open at 10:00 a.m.

Sony had less than 1 million units to sell. Had there been 3 million units, they would have sold out. The Japanese launch of PlayStation was as close as video games may ever get to an event like Woodstock. People from around the world camped out, many for days, in the hope of going home with a PlayStation 2. One disappointed boy is said to have committed suicide by jumping from the top of a building in Akihabara. When a boy was robbed while bringing his PlayStation 2 home from the store, it made national headlines in Japan. The government of Japan declared PlayStation 2 a "super computer," and limited the number of consoles visitors could take home.

That the success of the PlayStation 2 launch was based solely on the popularity of the Sony brand as the launch lineup was universally panned. (Sony did not have any in-house games in that lineup.)


March 5th: Sony sells 980,000 PlayStation 2 consoles and runs out of inventory More than 500,000 of these consoles were sold through Sony's online site. By March 31, the number of consoles sold rose to 1.4 million -- constrained only by lack of inventory."

http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/february04/ps2timeline/index2.shtml
 
timlot said:
Not that far off form PS2. I think some are forgetting how big Playstation 2 launch was....


"March 4th: PlayStation 2 goes on sale in Japan. Some stores have sold out through preorder, others open early and hand units out on a first-come, first-served basis. Along Akihabara, Japan's "Electric Town," stores with a few hundred units have lines of several thousand people. Sales begin at 12:00 a.m. and all PlayStation 2 console inventory is sold out before stores officially open at 10:00 a.m.

Sony had less than 1 million units to sell. Had there been 3 million units, they would have sold out. The Japanese launch of PlayStation was as close as video games may ever get to an event like Woodstock. People from around the world camped out, many for days, in the hope of going home with a PlayStation 2. One disappointed boy is said to have committed suicide by jumping from the top of a building in Akihabara. When a boy was robbed while bringing his PlayStation 2 home from the store, it made national headlines in Japan. The government of Japan declared PlayStation 2 a "super computer," and limited the number of consoles visitors could take home.

That the success of the PlayStation 2 launch was based solely on the popularity of the Sony brand as the launch lineup was universally panned. (Sony did not have any in-house games in that lineup.)


March 5th: Sony sells 980,000 PlayStation 2 consoles and runs out of inventory More than 500,000 of these consoles were sold through Sony's online site. By March 31, the number of consoles sold rose to 1.4 million -- constrained only by lack of inventory."

http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/february04/ps2timeline/index2.shtml
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that's pretty mad. Its amazing just how well the DS is doing if you look at it that way. I guess GAF is not a place to feel DS hype. Don't know if its a combination of Nintendo hate or PSP launching so soon after. The fact that in less than 1 weeks time all up - in both US+JAPAN, Nintendo has managed to sell 1 million units. That HAS got to be good. The thing to happen next; is for them to get as many units out the door in the US before the PSP launch (in march?). Nothing more to say really.. great great launch. Wish the generall sense of the DS launch wasn't so ladened with pessimism.

ITS GREAT!
 
"The launch titles were Super Mario Advance, Kuru Kuru Kururin, Napoleon, and F-Zero."

and Silent Hill Novel, Mr Driller, Chu Chu rocket, Castlevania, Monster *something* (Konami) , Wai Wai Racing, Dodge Ball.

Possibly a few others, i can't remember off hand.
 
GBA had 25 (or was it 26?) launch titles in Japan. Happy digging. :)

And uh, about that article -- people did not camp out for days for PS2. That's such BS. Lines started the night before in most places.
 
UPDATE 1-Nintendo says sold 500,000 DS handheld in Japan
Mon Dec 6, 2004 07:40 PM ET
(Updates with company confirmation)
TOKYO, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Nintendo Co. Ltd. (7974.OS: Quote, Profile, Research) has sold more than half a million of its DS handheld video game devices in Japan since its launch last week, bringing global sales to above one million units, the company said on Tuesday.

Nintendo began selling the DS in Japan on Thursday, kicking off what is expected to be a fierce fight for control of the handheld game market with rival Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) , which will launch the Playstation Portable in Japan on Dec. 12.

The DS, about the size of a paperback book and with two screens, one of which is touch-sensitive, scored sales of over 500,000 units in its first week on the market in the United States, where it was launched on Nov. 21.

Nintendo said it has already sold about 81 percent of the 570,000 units shipped domestically, or roughly 460,000 units. Consumers have reserved but not yet picked up another 50,000 of the devices, producing a combined total of 510,000 units.

"This is a very good start," said Nintendo spokesman Ken Toyoda, adding it was normal for some of the shipped units to remain unsold at this stage.

"Retailers know if they run out of product that customers won't come. Some stores are keeping stock so that they will have enough for the weekend."

Nintendo has been building interest in the DS over the past several weeks in an unprecedented campaign with television and outdoor advertisements featuring pop singer Hikaru Utada, as well as booths at which passers-by could try out the machine.

The company has said it expects to ship about one million devices each in both Japan and the United States by the end of 2004 and finish the business year ending March 2005 with total global shipments of about five million.

Nintendo is aiming the DS at users with higher disposable income and more interest in complex games, compared with the young children who have made its Game Boy line a global success. The DS sells in Japan for 15,000 yen ($146) apiece.

But Nintendo faces a formidable competitor when Sony launches its PlayStation Portable (PSP) machine in Japan on Dec. 12 at 19,800 yen. Sony is vying for a cut of the handheld game market, which Nintendo now dominates.

Sony is aiming to ship 500,000 PSP devices in Japan by the end of 2004 and 3 million units worldwide by March 31. The PSP will play music and movies, in addition to games.
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http://www.investor.reuters.com/bus...t=/stocks/news/recentnews&page=busnewsarticle

Associated Press
Nintendo Game Machine Gets Good U.S. Start
12.06.2004, 09:14 PM

The new portable video-game machine from Nintendo Co. is selling briskly in both the United States and Japan and the company is well on its way to reaching a target of selling 5 million units by April next year.

The Kyoto-based maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games said Tuesday that U.S. and Japan sales of the Nintendo DS, which stands for "dual screen" because of its two displays, now total more than a million.

The machine went on sale Nov. 21 in the United States and Dec. 2 in Japan, ahead of the Christmas season. In just five days, 81 percent of the 570,000 handhelds shipped to Japanese stores were already sold.

Including advance orders waiting to be picked up at stores, that percentage reaches 90 percent, or more than 510,000, company spokesman Ken Toyoda said. U.S. sales totaled 500,000 in the first week, he said.

Competition over game handhelds is expected to pick up here with the arrival of the first portable from Sony Corp., the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant that makes PlayStation 2.

PSP, or PlayStation Portable, is set to hit the store shelves in Japan Dec. 12. It goes on sale overseas next year.

While being edged out in the home console market by PlayStation, Nintendo has so far dominated the portable market with its Game Boy series.

Nintendo has played down the threat from Sony, saying that Nintendo's strength lies in its game software lineup and the ability to make games that are easy and fun. Some say PlayStation games are complex and targeted only at serious gamers.

PSP and Nintendo DS may be going after a slightly different market because users are also expected to watch movies on PSP.

Nintendo is sticking to its target of selling 5 million DS machines globally by March 31, 2005, the end of the fiscal year, up from its initial forecast of 3.5 million.

"We thought the DS (would) sell well because it got great advance reviews," Toyoda said. "And it's gotten off to a good start."
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http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2004/12/06/ap1694857.html
 
The Kyoto-based maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games said Tuesday that U.S. and Japan sales of the Nintendo DS, which stands for "dual screen" because of its two displays, now total more than a million.
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d0000000000000m
 
The Kyoto-based maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games said Tuesday that U.S. and Japan sales of the Nintendo DS, which stands for "dual screen" because of its two displays, now total more than a million.
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Bleh. Only a million in a week? I expect the PSP to sell 8 mllion in the first hour of the first day ALONE. :)
 
olubode said:
Not that it changes the numbers, but I think an asterix should be put next to the gamecube numbers because of its release date (9/14/2001)
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Yeah, they should have released it when Smash Bros was ready instead :P
But seriously... Ace Combat 4 went on sale that week and sold 220k. 9/11 didn't do shit to the money-spending public in Japan.
 
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