No doubting that Nintendo's on a roll. Big bank made under the era of the WiiDS Phenomenon—their twin terrors of videogame commerce on a serious world domination tip. But too much is simply not enough for some people. Take one Reggie Fils-Aime affectionately known as The Regginator. Even with the company's dynamic duo pulling in a life-to-date combined total of over 5 Oprahs or $5 billion in revenues (enough money for the gross domestic product of some countries), the American branch president and chief operating officer looked beyond the record figures for higher ground for the future.
You know you wanna see what The Reggulator says next...
Looking back on last year's market performance, Fils-Aime said that he was "not closed to being satisfied" by those results but that this year is looking much stronger. This strength is based NPD reports that Wii has passed 10 million life total in the U.S. and DS has passed 20 million life total. 2007 was expected to be the peaking year for DS but in uncanny fashion 2008's tallies show a 12% boost from last year, according to The R. He attributes this momentum to the unstoppable Pokémon franchise as an example of key software franchises driving hardware sales.
Some fun numbers for ya: The new Pokémon titles Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness have sold 600,000 copies in 6 weeks between the twin set. All in all, the whole Pokémon franchise has sold above 180 million copies. Also, Fils-Aime said that Nintendo expects "total DS worldwide sales will grow to almost 100 million systems" by the end of their current fiscal year ending March 31, 2009.
The cliché continues: It STILL prints money.
Thank you GamesIndustry.biz.
John Lucas
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