EA has just released its financial figures for the third quarter of Christmas 2007 (October-December), which shows that the company is making much more revenue than ever.
When you break down the numbers for handheld games, Nintendo ds it was by far the most impressive performance, with sales increasing 122 percent from $ 55 million in the third quarter of 2006 to $ 122 million.
EA released only five DS games during that time; Boogie, Need for Speed ProStreet, EA Playground, The Sims 2 Castaway, and The Simpsons Game, but even so, DS sales accounted for eight percent of EA’s total turnover.
Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has been talking about the DS, Nintendo’s future plans for its games, and the possibility of non-game services being available for download to DS from public Wi-Fi hotspots in the whole country.
He also said: “One of the lifestyle proposals that we would like to implement in the first half of this year is an experiment aimed at getting people to use their DS in public spaces as part of a larger effort to make the DS be more useful tool for people in their everyday life.
He went on to say, “It is a single architecture portable platform that can host anything with a wireless access point with over 20 million units in use in Japan and roughly the same amount in the US and Europe. I really believe that the idea of turning it into a gaming machine that is also useful in your daily life is good and possible. We will keep an eye on the results of the experiment and hopefully increase the number of places where you can use your DS in progressive steps. “
Like the PSP’s satellite navigation plug-in and the new Skype capabilities, DS has also had uses in everyday life: there is language translation software available for it and in Japan the console has been used to provide information to tourists when they are on museum visits. Meanwhile, a recent trial in the US allowed users of a baseball game to order food and watch the game on their DS.
In his interview, Mr. Iwata also talks about the original idea of doing something different with both the DS and the Wii.
He went on to say, “We knew that if games attracted fewer people, the future would be bleak. And with video games being demonized by the public, it was hard to see how games could thrive on all of that. So we knew we had to change it … Hearing stories about customers who seemed like they would never touch a game on store shelves looking for a copy of Brain Age is what encouraged us. “
The inveterate gamer should rest easy. Iwata went on to say that Nintendo would continue to support more experienced gamers by offering them games like Zelda, as well as newer and more challenging games, though he believes the benefit of pick-up and play titles is that they allow seasoned gamers to play with them. newcomers: something the CEO said was missing from the market.
So the future of DS looks bright for the casual gamer and die-hard Nintendo supporter, exactly what we’ll be able to download onto our DS in the future that’s useful remains to be seen. Discount coupons for Tesco? Maps? We hope Nintendo has something a little more exciting up its sleeve, and I’m sure it has!