PAOerfulone said:
Wow, the DS just plummeted from 07 to 08 and again from 10 to 11. The second drop makes sense since that was the year the 3DS launched and it got a price cut shortly afterwards to help get it off the ground along with Mario Kart 7 + Super Mario 3D Land. Towards the 2nd half of the year was when the 3DS really got of its ass and started rolling, which effectively killed the DS. But what the Hell happened from 07 to 08? |
The DS was an absolute sales monster in 2006 and 2007. It sold record numbers never before (or after) seen by any other console. A normal week for the DS in Japan was like 120k units while constantly being sold out. When big games released it often got close to 300k units... like, in the middle of summer. DS sales dropped after summer holidays 2007, to a level below 100k weekly units. So basically a "normal" level for a highly successful console, comparable to the Switch or the PS2.
That was right at the time when the PSP finally took off in Japan: The PSP 2000 model was released in September 2007, which sharply increased sales for the next 12 months or so. And Monster Hunter had been a big hit in Japan for quite a while. In early 2008 Monster Hunter Freedom Unite pushed the PSP to sell above the DS from March until August.
Basically, it was a combination of factors: For one, the DS had reached a certain level of saturation in Japan. In mid 2007 the insane amount of software releases for the system also cooled down a bit, to a somewhat normal level. And at the same time the PSP was getting a new model and had more and exciting software in the pipeline. That period from September 2007 to August 2008 was the PSPs absolute peak and that had an effect on DS sales.
