Numbers Favor the DS this Holiday Season

With the Big 3 home console makers constantly vying for the top spot with consumers (particularly this time of year), it can be easy to overlook the robust handheld market and its own system war. The Nintendo DS and the PSP are the two major competitors in this battle, and both are holding their own in the handheld market as each offers a different experience, depending on what a gamer is looking for. In a recent report from Gamasutra, however, sales figures for Nintendo’s and Sony’s handhelds reveal some interesting trends—particularly in software sales—that may or may not point to a clear winner thus far in the handheld wars.

At the time of this report, Sony’s PSP had 396 titles available, with each title averaging around 133,000 sales. In comparison, the DS had 653 titles available, averaging 163,000
sales per title. Based on these numbers, the Nintendo DS sells more than twice the number of titles as the PSP, with the average total sales clocking in at around 106 million and 52 million, respectively. Adding insult to injury, only three titles on the PSP have sold over a million copies, versus an astounding twenty titles on the Nintendo DS. It is, however, important to note that these are all American sales figures; the PSP has been enjoying exponentially increasing sales in Japan over the past few months.

Beyond these sales numbers, there are some interesting things to note about the developers for these two platforms. Out of the top five best-selling titles for the Nintendo DS, all five of them are first-party titles, such as New Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart, and Pokémon Diamond. In contrast, all of the titles in the PSP’s top five are third-party titles, with Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories leading the way (incidentally, the fifth top-selling DS title, Brain Age, had sold more copies than the PSP’s top-seller). These are not particularly new notions; Nintendo has always ridden on the strength of its first-party development. Additionally, it is worth noting that all of the PSP’s top five are available on more than one system. In other words, the PSP is far more likely to have ported titles than the Nintendo DS.

While there is always more to a story than just numbers, it would seem that the DS has a sizable lead in the handheld race, at least here in the States. With the holidays upon us, the lower price tag and larger game library of the DS might just widen that gap even further.