http://www.telecomskorea.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4994&Itemid=2

Nintendo Sells over 1 mln Portable Game Consoles in Korea
Written by T_Korea  
Wednesday, 09 January 2008

Nintendo, Japan's game console giant, has sold more than one million units of its portable game machine, "DS Lite," its Korean unit said Wednesday.

Launched earlier last year, the DS Lite consoles have appealed to a wide range of game users including women in Korea, which contributed to the sales milestone in such a short period of time, Nintendo Korea said in a press release.

The palm-sized game machine has been regarded by many local experts as a success in Korea where online games are generally more popular than console games dominated by Sony and Microsoft. Its simple and easy-to-play software helped expand its customer base here including men and women in their 20s and 30s, they added.

Nintendo, famous for its classic game title, "Super Mario," commenced its official Korean operations in January last year with the introduction of the DS Lite console model.

Can't wait to see how the Wii does there (and even more importantly, in China).

If Nintendo can ever produce enough to ship them over there

Sweet, next world domination.

Cool, nice to get numbers from Asia, it's debatable which is the largest market, Korea or Taiwan, but they're fairly similar in size.

DS has really sold a lot since the last data we got from August, I guess it had only just been released back then. 360 seemed to be doing pretty good there , PS3 pretty badly. I'd guess due to high rates of piracy in Korea PS3 isn't very appealing there.

End of August 2007:

PS2: 1331K
PSP: 315K
360: 136K
NDS: 128K
PS3: 5K

For comparison Taiwanese sales at the time were:

PS2: 1012K
NDS: 720K
PSP: 420K
360: 102K
PS3: 47K

I'd put the big difference between August DS numbers in Korea and Taiwan down to staggered launches. This is also the case with the PS3 which launched November 2006 in Taiwan, and June 2007 in Korea.



4th column is Korea, 5th is Taiwan.


I've read a lot of people posting how Wii sales in China are going to be huge, I really don't think they understand the market. Even though there is a huge population only a small percentage are in a financial position to be able to afford a games console. Now a small percentage of 1B is still a lot, but there isn't a big console gaming culture there. Most gamers are PC gamers. Also, even though none of the latest gen consoles have been officially launched there, all are widely available in China already. An official launch will help as you would assume it will be accompanied by advertising etc, which obviously doesn't happen for grey imports.

Also expect console software sales to be virtually non-existent in China, piracy is rampant. Nintendo don't have to worry about this, as they make a profit on the Wii and DS hardware, and it's not a problem for the PSP, but 360 is cracked wide open and probably still selling at a slight loss, which is why they haven't launched there yet. Sony probably see little reason to launch the PS3 there yet as a non-hacked console would sell next to nothing there, same seems to be true for Korea.

I'd expect the Chinese market to be a similar size to Korea and Taiwan, despite the huge population difference. Having said that, this market as absolutely huge potential, so launching there early, and building a brand could have massive benefits in the long term.

they probably think they can play starcraft on DS or something

j/k lol =P

Can't see the end side of the image, BKK.

Either way, 1m DS sales in Korea is HUGE.

Korea is vastly dominated by PC sales. The PS2, as far as I remember, only sold 2m units (I believe Starcraft sold more than the PS2 did).

In under a year?
Woof xD

Yeah, no one in China can afford a Wii, just like no one in China can afford a good PC, a high speed internet connection, and World of Warcraft.

I can't find any DS's here, is kinda annoying as i was considering getting one...