My prediction for highest single week: 2.3 million
Well DS is a monster of a seller, no doubt about it. Due to the Japanese slowdown I was expecting it to sell fewer units worldwide this year, but thanks mostly to PAL regions ever accellerating interest it is still managing to top the stellar 2007 so far into the year (1st half of 2008 is just short of 600k higher than 1st half of 2007)
Last year it broke records by being the first to ever sell more than 2 million in a single week, as well as besting the PS2s record of 5 straight weeks over 1 million (managing 6).
This year it seems to have a good chance of breaking it's own record, after all it is seeing improvement year on year in the two regions that matter most for huge Christmas sales... So saturation in Japan is not too much of an issue.
This table shows the sales for the first halves of each year.
| Console | DS 2006 |
DS 2007 | DS 2008 |
|
Total
|
7,111,328
|
11,013,881 | 11,603,269 |
|
America
|
1,496,367
|
3,358,632 | 3,652,954 |
|
Japan
|
3,636,366
|
3,985,148 | 1,643,006 |
|
Total Others
|
1,978,595
|
3,670,101 | 6,307,309 |
And the corresponding table for the best week of the year (last week ending before Christmas)
| Console | DS 2006 |
DS 2007 |
|
Total
|
1,476,012
|
2,019,006 |
|
America
|
522,199
|
902,172 |
|
Japan
|
493,278
|
308,260 |
|
Total Others
|
460,535
|
808,574 |
It is clear from the first table how astonishing the DS has become in Total Others, now percentage-wise it wouldn't be fair to compare 1st-year to best week ratios, because when a console/handheld sells so well during the year it has little chance of huge percentage boosts over Christmas as it would with small sales through the year.... but it looks to me as if DS in Others alone will easily top 1 million in it's best week, and America could see slight improvement also, Japan is less of a factor when using Christmas week because there is a much smaller boost there anyway.
So in total the DS is very likely to top last years best week, and although I haven't checked VGC history for this, it may be the first to ever manage more than 1 million in a single week in a single region.
There is one thing going against it, which is the placement of the weeks... In 2007 the best week ended on 23rd December (except Japan which ended on 24th)... which didn't include the best shopping day of the year (Christmas Eve) but did bag the second best and the days before it. In 2008 neither the 23rd or 24th December will be included for America or Others. However as the 24th is the most important day, and it wasn't part of 2007 either it isn't too much of a problem.
My guesses?
America - 850-900k (same/slightly fewer than last year, it has improved a little but the week placement means it will lose out)
Japan - 250-300k (same/slightly fewer - it had already started to slowdown last Christmas so that won't affect the week as much, but also a new Dragon Quest is supposedly out near the end of the year, which means huge sales for Japan and probably dragging DS hardware sales with it.
Others - 1100-1200k (much better than last year but not quite the same multiplier as the 1st half sales are... so far it is selling 1.7 times last year but I doubt it can manage almost 1400k sales)
Total - 2200-2400k
