I thought it would be interesting to compare DS and PS2 game sales in Japan given how the DS is already closing in on PS2 hardware sales and will probably surpass them by year's end. First of all in total software sale the PS2 still holds a pretty significant lead. The PS2 to date has sold 118.4 million pieces of software to the DS's 66.7 million in Japan. That's pretty impressive for the DS given it's been out two and a half years to the PS2's seven years in that territory. When you look at the top selling games for each system it becomes even more impressive for the DS. Here are the facts.
*The DS has four games selling more than 4 million units, the PS2 has none.
*In two-million plus sellers the DS leads the PS2 6 games to 4.
*In million sellers the PS2 barely holds to a lead over the DS 18 games to 16.
The one area that the PS2 does hold a significant lead to the DS is games selling over 500k. The DS has 28, and the PS2 has more than 50. In all this a concidering factor has to be price. Full priced games are much cheaper on the DS than the PS2, and some of the best selling DS game, notably Brain Training and Brain Training 2, are of the cheaper touch generation games. Still softare sales for the DS are undeniably amazing, and not only will the DS top overall PS2 software sales probably by next year sometime, it has a good shot of eventually surprassing 200 million pieces of software which is well more than the number of people who live in Japan. People who own the DS are buying conciderably more games on average than GBA owners did. For the lazy here are the top selling DS and PS2 games in Japan.
http://vgchartz.com/japtotals.php?name=&maker=&console=DS
http://vgchartz.com/japtotals.php?name=&maker=&console=PS2
