DSi's First Week Sales Dominate DS Lite's!

[City17]

The News: Functionality trumps cosmetics. That's what we've apparently learned from first week sales figures of the DSi. In a press release about the March NPD figures, Nintendo gave a glimpse of what we can expect in the April NPDs. In its first week back in June 2006, the DS Lite sold an impressive 226,300 systems in the U.S. In that same span during its first week, the DSi sold nearly double that figure at 435,000 systems.

Our Take: There are a few different ways of looking at this; the two most obvious being that either people are only willing to upgrade to a new version when it adds something more substantial than cosmetic changes and a brighter screen, or enough time has passed that those original DS owners are finally ready for an upgrade. Amazingly, the install base of the DS has grown substantially since 2006, meaning the odds of new DSi owners having already owned a DS or DS Lite are that much greater. Clearly people just really love gadgets with cameras in them.

 

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