Sky High 'Lite Sales

Healthy sales news for Nintendo, as the Lite and original DS in the US together sold over 590,000 units in June.

Launched on June 11th, the updated model of the Nintendo DS helped hardware units of the handheld soar to 593,000 for that month. The PS2 sold 312,000 units, while the 360 was next with 277,000 units.

Anita Frazier of NPD Group, a market research firm providing news and information on consumer trends, sales and marketing information for a diverse range of industries, says, “More hardware is in consumers hands which bodes well for future software sales, and the availability of a wide variety of content - like the non-traditional games Brain Age and Brain Academy from Nintendo - spurs new consumers to try gaming, and hopefully stick with it.”

"And the DS is certainly rockin' - really, there was such positive news all around it was nice to see. It's not like some months where one title steals all the thunder, or one hardware device gets all the sales. It was so generally healthy and positive I think that bodes very well for the future."

Total videogame sales for the month amounted to some $844.5 million - $135.5 million of which were for the DS - up from $104.5 million this time last year. In fact, overall videogame sales were up 25% compared to June 2005.

Source: PPN News Services, NDP Group