Nintendogs was the killer app that got the DS a foothold in North America. Mario carried it forward a year later. The DSLite drops in the same year, effective but not mind blowing until christmas of that same year 2006. Then over the course of six months proceeds to sell more than it sold in the prior year and a half. At that point is was a combo of major sentiment, mario and nintendogs. I say good sentiment because the sheer volume of DS sales outpaced any of the games sold for it during that time. People bought the DS just to own the DS regardless of the games.

Very interesting! Are you on pro by any chance?

Obviously Nintendo led the 2006 sales trends, as it sold as much as Nintendogs did in all of 2006 in as little as 33 weeks. However, the ramping up of DS sales is part of a massive haul of slugger hits, as weel as a well-embraced remodel (the DSLite as you say). To say it's all about Mario is a terrible overstatement. That Mario led the wave, it's fair as long as it's not used out of context to push ideas that are simply untrue (>.> Rol).

No Pro Here and I got it very wrong on the software side anyway. If you look up the Weekly Chart Index you can dig around in there to find this stuff. At around June 2006 there were about 4.5m DS sold in the US. At the end of Dec 2006 There were almost 9m DS sold. June 2006 almost 14m software for DS sold, end of Dec 2006 almost 32m softare sold. 

I must of had a brain fart when I transposed the HW vs SW. I'll go back to the original point before my sidetrack. Nintendogs and Mario pushed the sales initually, but by this time there was already so much software for DS out that you could have removed nintendogs and mario from the racks and you'd likely only dent the total SW sold by 15%.

Nice, thanks for clarifying.

About the 15% SW sold, I think one important part of the equation to remember is that alot of the sales of smaller titles feed off the stability of the pillars, such as Mario 2D, Nintendogs, MK and Brain Age. To remove these would ultimately hurt the sales of the smallers ones by alot, as alot of the purchases of smaller titles are what I like to call convenience purchases. I have the platform, so might as well buy this or that game that's on it ;)

You know what I mean :)

Pointless poll, pedoplumber is like Obama Bin Laden: he's always guilty!!!

Now I know you are just trolling this thread.

Wii Sports has not been bundled with the Wii for around 2 years now.  That's how they "opted out".

In reading this thread, a discussion about the future direction of gaming software has become a argument about launch lineups.

The piece in question basically states that selling big games is not the future. Rather the iOS model is.

However, it does not seem to take into account who buys what. The fickle iOS players of todaymaube somewherer else tomorrow. Meanwhile, the gamers will also be there twosome degree. The question is whether or not they will continue to be a sufficient market to be profitable.

Finally, if Nintendo is in trouble for losing money for one year, what is the future for other Japanese electronics companies which have lost more money and lost money longer? No one is ready to bury them but they feel compelled to write doom stories for Nintendo,

Mike from Morgantown

That's one of the main errors people makes. One year of losses is nothing compared to decades of profit including the massive profits that the DS and the Wii managed to pull off.

Nintendo would be in trouble though if they released the Wii U along with several high quality titles and a relatively low price but still didn't sell very well.

By the way, I quote myself only to show what happens when you try to post on an iOS device. So if you can't type well, imagine what it does for the gaming experience.

I must add to this thread that we can't pin Nintendo's financial troubles entirely on the 3DS. We must remember the Yen/Dollar situation

True, if the 3DS had shifted in larger volume, they might have been able to scrape by with profits, but as it was Nintendo deliberately dug themselves in with the losses in order to get momentum going for the console. Proof that they should have pursued a different strategy, but even with a successful 3DS out of the gate, Nintendo would be having problems.