Nintendo DS Lite sales so hot, people are stealing them by the truckload.

[Trauma-san]

Of course, some idiot said that Nintendo's close to filing bankruptcy, but the sales of their new DS Lite (which is just a redesigned version of the regular DS, nothing new about it!) are so hot, the japs are stealing entire truckloads of the systems.

Nintendo confirms mass DS heist
Bounty of new Nintendo portables destined for UK gone; loss of reported $2 million in product won't disrupt launch.
By Tim Surette, GameSpot
Posted Jun 19, 2006 5:52 pm PT

When toys go wrong...Late last week, unconfirmed reports began to surface that a large shipment of DS Lites were stolen in Asia. Today Nintendo confirmed that the larceny did in fact take place, and that the shipment was intended for the launch of the new portable in the UK.

"A number of white DS Lites made for the UK market were stolen in Hong Kong," a Nintendo rep told GameSpot News. "Nintendo is making every effort to ensure that there is enough product available in the UK to meet market demand at launch."

The exact amount of losses as a result of the theft isn't clear, but several Internet reports speculated that the monetary damage hovered around the $2 million mark. Others reported the handheld as turning up en masse in the black markets of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The DS Lite, which has been in high demand in both Japan and the United States, is scheduled to make its debut in the UK on June 23. The handheld was released in America on June 11, where it sold 136,500 units in its first two days on the market.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6152928.html


Didn't I read a report recently that Sony was laying off 20 thousand employees?  ... and everybody at Nintendo's going to lose their jobs, right?  PLEASE YOU JUST GOT BITCH SLAPPED AGAIN

[Trauma-san]

I just thought of something... since Nintendo made 875 million dollars profit last year, and Sony's gaming division only made like 50 or whatever rediculously low number it was, maybe SONY actually stole the truck.  They could sell DS Lite's on the black market and it'd be the first time they ever actually made money off a console.......

[No Compute]

If you check the Japanese game charts since the release of the DS the majority of the games in the top ten are DS games, I think that Brain Training game or whatever it is has been in the top ten for about a year now.

[Trauma-san]

Nobody can see long-term enough to see how Brilliant most of Nintendo's recent moves have been.  That Brain Training game is crazy.  It's like nothing that's been done before... and the sales have actually grown on the chart instead of the typical 'big first month' and then afterwards it doesnt' sale anything.  Nintendo even gave the game away to members of their fan club over there, with the idea that once they played it, they'd get their friends interested in it, and word of mouth would sell the game.  It actually worked! 

In  america they've done similar things, giving tons of the games away free to the press, and the game has gotten great reviews.   Plus, they released it with a 19.99 price tag. 

I think they're on a mission to prove the other companies strategy wrong.  Nintendo's frequently said they're going after the outside-of-the-box game market, trying to attract other than 12-25 year old males... and "Brain Training" I'll bet is selling to tons of women.  It might not mean much for a typical gamer, but in a business sense, it's brilliant.  "Nintendogs" was fucking HUGE and you know it was selling to women.

They've also got some kind of new series in Japan where they sell games with simple graphics, and not just puzzle games, classic-type things like old adventure games and things (but new ones) for 19 dollars or whatever.  I can't remember what they're calling them, but they're basically just new games that are designed like all the tried-and-true old school stuff.  It'll be interesting to see if they successfully pull that off.

In other news, Sony just announced last month that their next console will cost 600 bucks and they don't care that most of you can't afford it.  The graphics will be slightly better, though.... can't wait.   

[daWappla]

I just thought of something... since Nintendo made 875 million dollars profit last year, and Sony's gaming division only made like 50 or whatever rediculously low number it was, maybe SONY actually stole the truck.  They could sell DS Lite's on the black market and it'd be the first time they ever actually made money off a console.......

LOL

If they did they´d probably sell them on their own and name them "Sony DS Rite"  lol...

[Sikotic™]

I saw that my brother bought a DS Lite and slapped him.

[daWappla]

By the way...

Can you use the gameboy advance cable, that is used to hook up your gba to the gc, with the DS Lite?

[Trauma-san]

I have no idea, to be honest.

Sales figures today released by Nintendo show that in Japan, the DS has sold in it's initial 18 months on the market more than the PSP, PS2, GameCube, and even the mighty Gameboy Advance did in their initial 18 months; it's on track to be the best selling system of all time in Japan.



Also, at this time, the Nintendo DS has a larger market share than any other system in Japan, including the PS2.

Also, they released a graph showing the insane trend that "Brain Age" is following... most games have huge numbers the first week then fall drastically off from there, Brain age is one of the first to totally buck the trend as shown by this graph:

[Black_Smoke]

Yea i got a DSlite the first day it came out here,shit is sick,looks nice,plays nice,so much more brighter then the original,the games look really different on a brighter screen,i was surprised with how small it is too,props to nintendo 

its also sellin pretty good in NA too,most places by me were all sold out of them
gonna be interesting to see the sales figures for NA..

[Black_Smoke]

o yea and the ds web browser is coming out in Japan July 23rd,hopefully it comes out in NA soon after

[Javier]

Is the TV Tuner out in Japan already? 

[Trauma-san]

Yea i got a DSlite the first day it came out here,shit is sick,looks nice,plays nice,so much more brighter then the original,the games look really different on a brighter screen,i was surprised with how small it is too,props to nintendo 

its also sellin pretty good in NA too,most places by me were all sold out of them
gonna be interesting to see the sales figures for NA..

It sold 138,000 systems (the Lite) in 2 days, that's the only numbers I've heard so far but it's only been out two weeks or whatever.

Not bad for a redesign.