Nintendo DS sales hit 10 million worldwide

LOS ANGELES: Nintendo Co. Ltd said on Tuesday worldwide sales of its Nintendo DS portable video game player have hit 10 million worldwide, with about 4 million sales coming from the United States.

The company last week said the dual-screened Nintendo DS was the fastest-selling video game machine ever in Japan, where more than 5 million units were snapped up by consumers since its launch there in early December 2004.

Hit titles for the Nintendo DS include "Nintendogs," a game in which players care for and play with a puppy, racing game "Mario Kart DS" and "Super Mario 64 DS."

The Nintendo DS launched in late November 2004 in the United States and ended that year with 1.2 million units sold in North America.

"It is on the upswing of its life cycle," Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

She declined to give a sales forecast but said the Japan-based company would provide additional information during its upcoming quarterly financial report.

Kaplan added that Nintendo's seven-week-old Wi-Fi Connection wireless gaming service has had more than 550,000 unique visitors globally.

The company's Game Boy Advance SP, the newest version of Nintendo's popular hand-held system, sold 4.6 million units in North America in 2005, compared with 7.6 million in 2004.

Hand-held video game machines, which also include Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Portable, have helped lift the U.S. video game industry as a transition to new console technology has dampened sales.

U.S. video game hardware and software sales were $7.6 billion through November 2005, up 5 percent from the same period in 2004, according to market researchers the NPD Group.