Based on the facts, stats and reports from this site, the NDS is selling steady at 76-79k a week, which is anyway undoubtfully a good amount, from Sept. 9th.

What I saw, anyway, is that the new releases that went on sales during this full month were uncapable of moving more HW.

Even taking into account the new PSP and some compelling software that was released for Sony's handheld, that may have temporarily shifted intrest from N's console, the level of sales for the NDS have dropped well below the 100,000 mark that we were used to see.

I also noticed that DS, in Japan, has almost reached the 20 million barrier, which is an awful amount of HW 

So, my questions are: Did the NDS reached a point of stagnation in sales??? will this be its new average level of sales? Will any new software coming out be able to move more HW (maybe except the latest installment of DQ)? Will it be able to go far beyond PS2's record??

Personally I think a new DS design will be released sometime which will basically start the cycle over again as many DSL owners rush to the redesigned DS.

Otherwise I believe the DS may hit a point where it so completely saturates the Japanese market that it simply cannot reach more new customers and has to rely on people buying DS's to replace their old one - something made tricky by Nintendos habit of high quality hardware and extremely nice hardware support.

I think DQ9 will decide that, if it doesn't move a lot of hardware then it'll mean that the saturation point is being neared.

 Agreed, thus the smartest thing for N to do is to release a hardware revision at the same time as DQ9. With bundles. Lots of bundles.

Thats guaranteed to be good. 

You guys forget that in Japan, the DS doesn't have a rechargeable battery, so every time it runs out of juice you have to buy a new one. They won't stop selling there any time soon.

Not only that Rubang, but there is no such thing as harddrives in computers and consoles in Japan. They force their japanese kids to memorize numbers in the basement.

Nintendo has expanded the market, especially in Japan; PS2 did ~22mil therefore DS is bound to do lots more.

 I'm not so sure about that, not entirely... here's why: as we saw with GBA, the first revision, the GBA SP, sold like hotcakes, the second one did not (GB Micro). My guess is that the market was saturated and not many people were interested in changing something that was fine and working anyway.

The only difference here is that the GBM was released very late, near the end of the GBA's life cycle.

Also let's consider what Nintendo can do to improve the DS! I don't see any change to the design of this console that can improve it:

- backlighting is good and so are the screens (even dimension-wide as making screens smaller would make   the touch screen unplayable);

- the dimensions can't be shrinked anymore as there would be no spaces for   buttons or you will need to sacrifice the GBA port (which is used from some additional peripherals, so it's   out of question unless you can integrate them to the body) to make it thinner;

- battery life is at least twice as the PSP.

 The only thing that you can change is the shape, but I feel difficult to come up to another one that look so cool and polished like that.

 The first model of the DS was bulky, the screens not so bright (and there were 'light spot' on them) and definetivly not cool at all.

Improving this model require serious thinking or they will face another GBM failure in terms of appeal!!!

I think DS is reaching 1:6 soon in Japan. That is, for every 6 Japanese, there's 1 DS.
It will likely hit that mark by year end.

I think roughly, the avg family size is 4. So, if DS can make it to 1:4, we can pretty much declare Nintendo king of Japan.

Nintendo is the king of Japan right now. DS might be at a saturation point, it is very hard to tell. I think Nintendo is really just taking a moment to reflect before lowering the price of the console to $99 in Americas. A price drop in Japan plus DQIX would pretty much boost the console.

There is still a lot Nintendo can do to get the console into homes and I am certain that with at least two good years left in the DS tank (as in prime years), some of those strats will get used.