Japan’s Handheld Market » DS
Click for 150 on DS
Handhelds consoles popularity in Japan is a mirror of the worldwide market. In Japan the DS has become something more. Constant adverts have saturated every media, everyone knows about it. Indeed sales today suggest that one in five people in Japan now own one and that is only set to rise since the release of the DSi.
It is actually phenomenal what Nintendo managed to achieve. Common logic would dictate that abandoning the much loved Gameboy brand would be suicide for the company, as that product with the Pokemon brand kept them solvent through the Gamecube years.
However re-brand themselves they did and contrary to their history with failed novelty systems have succeeded. They have recaptured the place in Japan consciousness that they occupied during the Famicon years. When games were simple, unthreatening two buttoned affairs and spanned such a vast range of tastes that there was something for everyone.
