It is pretty amazing when you think about it – in the months prior to release, industry folks were quite skeptical about the ‘gimmicky’ (in the pejorative sense) dual screen handheld coming from Nintendo, looking for a true next-gen replacement for the GameBoy Advance. Many were predicting failure or at least a disappointment in the face of a coming challenge from Sony, though most cautioned never to count out Nintendo when it comes to handheld gaming.

Well, regardless of where the various media sources stood regarding the potential success of the DS and how the PSP would fare, I don’t recall anyone predicting that the DS would become the fastest selling gaming console in history, completely dominating sales charts and bringing in new gamers by the thousands every month all over the world. But so it has.

Now, with a few months to go before the third anniversary of the system launch, an important milestone has been reached – the DS has sold 50 million units. What is perhaps even more amazing is that before the launch of the DS Lite in March of 2006 the system had ‘only’ sold about 15 million units after 18 months, and has subsequently sold more than 35 million units in the past 16 months.

Let that sink in for a second – 35 million systems in 16 months.

At that rate the DS should be well positioned to exceed 100 million in total sales during its’ lifetime, joining the small and elite group of electronic devices to accomplish that task. The original GameBoy did it, as did the Sony PlayStation and PS2 systems. The iPod has done it, and the Sony Walkman. But as this article indicates, selling 100 million of something is extremely rare and takes many years to accomplish.

Regardless of where you fall in the console wars, gaming wars, MP3 player wars, browser wars or any of the other meaningless battles being raged across the internet today – stop for a second and recognize Nintendo for this grand accomplishment. Because as they have made clear, it isn’t just about selling loads of product and making tons of money – it is about bringing folks who have never been gamers into the fold … with the hope that they continue buying games and making game companies money, of course.

Tags: Misc