DS Gamers Smarter Than Expected?

DS gamers are getting smarter by the day, or so appears from the sales figures of the Brain Training title.

The latest craze to sweep across Europe isn't a miracle diet or a celebrity workout, but a series of innovative exercises designed to help exercise the brain. Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? took Japan by storm and has now enjoyed similar success in Europe since its launch on 9th June 2006.

European consumers have gone mad for Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?, snapping up over 500.,000 copies in just nine weeks from the game's launch. Sales have increased week on week since launch, with more than 60.000 copies now selling across Europe each week. This is unusual because game sales normally peak at launch and then decline throughout the product lifecycle. The European sales trend is even more impressive than that in Japan, where it took 16 weeks to sell the initial 500.000. Total sales in Japan have now reached 3 million and show no signs of declining. With America's 600.000 copies (come on America, surely you want to outnumber Europe on this one), the total amount of Brain Training copies is set over 5 million worldwide.

Sales of Nintendo DS are also going from strength to strength and have been bolstered by Nintendo DS Lite. Since the launch of Nintendo DS Lite on the 23rd of June around 140.000 Nintendo DS are being sold across Europe each week. This sales pace is showing no signs of slowing down, even in August, which is normally a slow sales period in the video game industry.

Laurent Fischer, Marketing Director for Nintendo Europe commented: "We are delighted that Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training has been such a huge success in Europe with thousands of people training their brains with this unique title. We hope that the continued success of this and other Touch! Generations software will help gaming as an industry expand and begin to appeal to entirely new audiences."

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Comments

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  Nothing really shocking about it. Nintendo is simply playing to the strengths and common use for a handheld which is great, interactive twitch style gaming. Most people these days don't have time to throw down 20 hours of console gaming (esp. on the go) but I'll take 20 minutes a day to run Brain Games or 15 minutes to walk and groom the Nintendog. Sony, MS and everyone else that wants to play ball with Nintendo in their home court need to learn this simple, obvious fact :)

  Darkuni (DSR), 30-11--0001 at 00:00
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  very good summarising. *applaud* couldn't have said it better myself.

  yakutatazu, 30-11--0001 at 00:00