Nintendo DS Becoming Best Selling Console of All Time in a Couple of Days

[homer]

RolStoppable said:

NYANKS said:

I'm pretty sure the argument basis isn't over whether the DS is a "thing that plays games", its over a possible inherent advantage that handhelds have over consoles.  They are portable, possibly enhancing their consumer base.  They're usually cheaper, as are their games.  There is a much greater tendency for a household to have multiple copies of them.  How many houses have two 360's or PS3's.  There's probably not even that many dual Wii households. 

That's definitely an advantage that handhelds have over home consoles, but the stationary platforms also have one big thing going for them: they are viewed as the premium choice across the entire industry which means that everyone puts their top development teams on games for those. This is especially prevelant among Western publishers. As you might know, there are hardly any significant games coming from them for handhelds.

Better software makes the hardware more desirable to own, I think everyone can agree on this. Handhelds have historically always played second fiddle to home consoles and were usually seen as "lesser gaming" by a large group of gamers. This changed somewhat this generation (moreso in Japan than anywhere else), but the number of blockbusters on portable consoles is still very low compared to home consoles.

I think though, that portability outweighs the software, as shown by the sales. Of course, you must factor in the multiple handhelds sold, making this a headache to compare seeing as we do not know how many people have a ds while we have a pretty good estimate over how many people have a ps2. Then again, how many people use the ps2's would have to be factored in. I think we are missing the point of the thread though. I think it was just trying to show that the sales were nearly on par with ps2's, not the user base.