Nintendo appeared to have taken something of a leaf from Sony's book recently, and begun paying less and less attention to its handheld consoles, the DS and (especially) the DSi. But the last couple of weeks have seen a small shift in that attitude, though according to Ubisoft the DS market is suffering (actually,
it's still suffering).
Speaking to
Gamesindustry.biz, UK boss Mark Slaughter has highlighted the current nature of the struggling dual-screen console.
"Overall, for everybody… there is a decline in the DS market in its entirety," he explained. "So instead of that being a growing market, within Ubisoft we have to find out how much of that pie we can actually defend."
The DS arm of the French gaming giant has felt the pinch during the recession, and has shifted its focus toward careful targeting of the most successful demographics, and forgone any current attempts to sell to more diverse areas of the market.
"There is still a massive installed base, so the market is still there – but I think you've got to be clever about what part of that market you're taking," he concluded.
But Sony has proven recently that with sincere enthusiasm from the first party, even aging hardware can recapture the public's attention. If
Nintendo gets back on board, the DS's fortunes could still be recovered.
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Hatschii | 16:58 - 30 September 2009
this article is really stupid. The DS has record sales in US, Europe and japan. Worldwide softwaresales are superhigh. There are many big releases now like Layton 2, Scribblenauts, Kingdom Hearts and Mario & Luigi 3 and soon Zelda, which destroy everything the PSP has to offer.
I don´t wonder, why Ubisoft is not happy with the sales of their Ds-Games, but who really cares about the crappy Imagine or Bratz Games, that are released every few months? Such games are ok on a plattform like the iphone, where prices are cheap and quality standarts not compareable to handhelds.
but if they want to compete with Square, Level 5 or Nintendo itself they have to put way more effort into their games.
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Raurik_A | 09:08 - 30 September 2009
This is made especially ironic to me as I opted to trade in my DS for a PSP.
*awkward silence*
Yeah, MGS and GT won me over... That and King of Fighters on the go.
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