Handhelds lure new audience in Japan

<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/25/news_6129699.html" target="_blank" >Gamespot</a> posted this

<BLOCKQUOTE>Nintendo and Sony are reporting that the DS and PSP are luring a new kind of consumer into the game-playing fold--more women and more gamers over the age of 25, the Asahi Shimbun is reporting.

No-o Kitaeru Otona-no DS Training, a Nintendo DS game created by Tohoku University professor Ryuta Kawashima, has been a hit among older consumers. The game is based on a best-selling book about training the brain to operate at peak performance, and it features drawing exercises, simple calculations and math problems, and literary-based reading exercises.

A Nintendo official claims, "We eliminated a barrier to playing the game." That barrier was making users, who were unaccustomed to using standard controller buttons, write on the DS screen instead.

The game had sold about 205,000 copies through June, and 68 percent of purchasers were over the ages of 25, according to Enterbrain, Inc. and Nintendo.

Women accounted for 42 percent of sales of Nintendogs for the DS, beating the existing percent average of women across all games purchased by women--which currently stands at 23 percent. Reportedly, Nintendogs has sold over 490,000 copies since its release in April.

On the PSP front, 360,000 copies of Minna no Golf have been sold for the Sony handheld, making it the best-selling game for that system.

Japanese sales figures show that 2.33 million DS units have been sold, along with a corresponding total of 4.4 million DS games. Almost 1.5 million PSP consoles have been sold, along with a corresponding total of 2.65 million games.

As previously reported, the Japanese hardware market has generated 73 billion yen ($651 million) in revenue over the first half of 2005, a 50 percent increase from the previous year. </BLOCKQUOTE>