Why the DS sells so well. (IMO)

[danskmacabre]

We all know the DS is selling like hotcakes.
And sales compared to the PSP (which to be honest is selling well) are phenomenal.

However I reckon the main reason sales are so crazy is because, unlike the PSP, a household tends to have more than one DS.

Take my family for example.
I bought a DS lite for myself a year ago, shortly after the Lite was released.
A couple of months later, my son was always borrowing it, so I bought one for his Xmas present.
So I got my DS back

Then I made the mistake of lending my DS to my wife and sure enough, I was competing for time on my DS again.

So, her birthday was coming up and I bought her a Pink DS.
My Daughter, who is only 5, borrows one of the 3 DSs in our house and she's not THAT keen on then yet , so I haven't got her one (yet ).

So we are all happy bunnies.
After saying that, I limit their gaming time to no more than 1 hour a day (2 on weekends).

And that's the difference. The DS is cheap enough to justify having more than one in the household and the game prices seem to come down pretty fast as well, especially if you buy 2nd hand.
Also, there's such a variety of tastes in games available.

So there you are, my 2 cents worth.

[NeonTetra]

I agree it's probably part of the success of DS. I think there are also enough games out there - New Super Mario Bros etc - that have top multiplayer modes, and game sharing ones too so you only need one copy of the game, that it really means having two consoles offers a lot more. When my brother bought his girlfriend a DS, he soon bought one for himself after just so they could play head-to-head. The price is probably just about low enough to make it an impulse buy - if you've got one console and a game you want to play together you'd go out and buy a second one...

But Nintendo has really surpassed anything a console manufacturer has achieved before with its marketing of the DS, in my opinion. I remember going to the launch and Nintendo saying it was going to be marketing its games over a long period of time to do away with what happens traditionally with games; they sell about 90% of their total number in the first month or so then the game just stops being stocked in shops. It's incredible when you think about it that people are still buying the original Brain Training and Animal Crossing is still getting TV ads when they're such old games. Naturally the price of them comes down over that time, and that keeps everyone happy. People who don't really care if a game is brand new or not can pick up a game for £15... It's perfect for the short attention span of kids that they have so much to choose from and the games don't have to be expensive.

[SetsFireToPoshHammer]

That's a very good point Tetra, I hadn't really thought about it before but the shelf life of DS games, especially in the Touch! Generations category, is much longer than that of PSP games (or console games even).

I remember thinking a while back, 'so we have brain training, we have nintendogs and we have some others, but where next for Touch! Generations'. It seems the answer is there is no next, at least not in the sense that we typically think of for games retail cycles.

Seeing as Touch! Generations is such a broad and far reaching concept, it doesn't need to undergo the constant revisionism that other canons of games do. If I was to buy a DS for my mum, I know what games I would be buying her to go with it and all of them would be titles that launched withing the first six months of the console's release.

There is no doubt that Ninty really do know what they are about just now.

[danskmacabre]

What would be kickass would be if Nintendo came out with a Storage card (like the R4 etc) where you could legitimately pay (unlike the R4) for/download full games straight onto the DS via the WFC or alternatively PC and upload to the DS.

I do realise there would be DRM issues, but if it was implemented like Steam or something, the distribution costs would be a LOT lower and we COULD get games cheaper.
It is a bit of a pain carrying lots of DS cartridges around.

Probably won't happen, but I can dream.

[Cheeky-em]

Well they are very good so i dont see why not!

[yiyi]

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