While it may not have seemed like the DS was top priority -- or much of a priority at all, next to the Wii -- at last week's E3, the handheld continues to wreak sales havoc in Japan. Can anything stop the DS there? It continues, week after week, to lead sales by an embarrassing margin. For the week ending July 8, the DS led the Wii by more than 60,000 units sold, and the handheld boasted three of the top five game titles as well. There's no need to shame the other systems by talking about their sales, but some other handheld took the third slot in hardware.Will the DS ever reach these epic levels of success in the US? It looks like the Wii may have more of a chance at that over here, but either way, Nintendo's continuing success is nothing to sneeze at.
American hardware sales from October from the NPD group indicate that the trend continues -- video game sales are up, revenue is up, and if this continues, it's going to be a banner year for game sales. With two console launches less than a week away, we're pretty sure the industry will hit that grace note that triggers the confetti, but the victory can't be hung on just the release of the next gen systems. No, shocking as it may be to some, the Nintendo DS is at the heart of this year's rocketing game sales. And for October, we're even happy to share the love with the guys who are usually our mortal enemies -- the PSP fanboys. Last month, a full quarter of the top one hundred games in the U.S. were portable games.
121,595 (86.32%)
1,639 (6.85%)
3,456 (2.20%)
1,198 (4.84%)
... the harder they fall. The Japanese population's brief 
Quite possibly the only sane thing we've received from Japan this week, the Japanese hardware sales charts show it like it is -- no silly comparisons, half-truths or fuzzy mathematics in sight. The ranking, according to number of units sold:
Oh, look. It's the weekly Japanese hardware sales chart. Every time I look around, it's in my face. The ranking, according to number of units sold:
