The thing about DS is...
1) Its going to be Nintendo's most successful platform ever for software.
2) its probably going to be Nintendo's most successful platform ever for hardware.
But...
1) DS sales have maybe two-three major pushes left in Japan. DQIX can do 2m week one and probably push DS sales 40k when it releases and then push an extra 10k-20k DS units for a few weeks after that.
2) DS is still peaking in the west. Especially in Europe.
3) Nintendo had to kill off GBA early to have DS ready to disrupt PSP. I doubt it wants to kill off DS so early.
I think we will see a new Nintendo portable introduced within a year - in Japan. But I don't think it will be by the end of this year. I think Japan gets a new DS model or a new portable in like mid 2009, and we get it around the same time or for holiday 2009. DS is going to hit 98m shipped on March 31.
If DS2 came in April 2009 in Japan and Sept 2009 in the west, DS would be keep going on fumes to like 120m by March 31, 2010 and then sales would start to rapidly decrease as DS2 took off, in theory. DS had such a high peak and still has room for price drops so I feel like even if DS2 came out in 2009, DS would eventually be able to hit 130m-150m, simply because they aren't going to go from 28m shipped this year to 0m shipped in two years. It doesn't work that way. DS still has two big holidays at least in the west.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
