Report: Nintendo Sells 30 Million DS Units In Japan

Nintendo has sold over 30 million units of its DS handheld in Japan, Famitsu publisher Enterbrain said Tuesday, as Nintendo's own New Super Mario Bros. leads software sales. To be precise, Enterbrain said (as reported by Kotaku) the DS has sold 30,030,434 units in Japan between its release in December 2004 through March 21, 2010. Worldwide, the console has sold over 125 million units. New Super Mario Bros., released in May 2006 in Japan, is the top-selling DS game in the region, selling 5,767,262. September 2006's Pokemon Diamond/Pearl follows in second place with 5,766,57 units sold, while November 2005's Animal Crossing sold 5,133,862 units coming in third. Sales of the DS since 2004 include the original DS, the DS Lite, the DSi and the DSi LL, the latter of which is launching in the West later this year under the name "DSi XL." Just yesterday, Nintendo announced the tentatively-named Nintendo 3DS. While little is currently officially known about the hardware, Nintendo did describe it as a backwards-compatible successor to the current DS hardware, with its main feature being 3D viewable with the naked eye. Japanese reports also emerged claiming the 3DS will use Sharp's parallax barrier technique for portraying 2D images in 3D. Analyst Colin Sebastian with Lazard Capital Markets said, "We ... believe that a new DS will generate increasing unit sales for Nintendo driven by the new platform." The 3DS is slated to arrive by March 2011, with more details coming at E3 later this year.