DS Lite wins UK Christmas battle
Via Gamesradar
UK sales of Nintendo's DS Lite in the run-up to Christmas last year eclipsed that of Sony's PSP, highlighting DS's broad appeal and value for money, and potentially boding well for long term success from Wii's similarly accessible quality.
Recently released figures from analyst ChartTrack shows that in the three weeks before Christmas nearly 250,000 DS Lites were sold, including a staggering 99,617 in a single week, compared to 166,000 PSPs during the same period. It's a truly fantastic achievement for the quirky handheld, which was only released in the UK last June.
Even so, Sony's much maligned handheld still managed to shift over 800,000 units in 2006. That's 50,000 more than the 740,000 Xbox 360s sold last year, proving that, despite some astonishingly bad press surrounding PSP and Sony's mentalist marketing tactics, PlayStation Portable ain't dead and buried quite yet.
PS2 continues to soldier on, turning out an average of more than 40,000 in each of the three weeks before Christmas - compared with paltry sales of the UK's remaining Xbox and GameCube consoles.
Meanwhile, Sega USA told BusinessWeek.com that it predicts PS2 will actually "sell more than any other format" during November to December this year, with yet another price cut "in the not-too-distant future" helping Sony's previous console to be "actively sold" well into 2008. Which is probably over-egging it a bit.
