Monday, June 20, 2005

More DS Info

Thanks to DQ reader Doug Walsh for letting me know that a DS will play all the GBA titles, and the screen is better, so there's now downside to buying a DS, even if the DS-specific titles don't appeal to you.

I've also gotten several e-mails saying that Nintendogs is driving the DS in Japan. It certainly did for a while, but out of those seven games in the top thirty last week, only one was a Nintendogs title. So Nintendo has successfully leveraged Nintendogs, but the system's appeal in Japan has moved beyond that at this point.

I think the DS isn't going to catch on here until there's more software available that is DS-specific. There are only six titles listed as coming out between now and the end of July. That's very weak when you consider that June is an end-of-quarter month for most software companies.

The PSP is worse. THREE games listed between now and the end of July. I'd like to buy a PSP, but I'm not buying one to play Hot Shots Golf for the third time, Wipeout for the fourth, and a bunch of crappy movies on UMD. This is unusual for Sony, to have this kind of product desert, and they're betting so much on the PSP that it's even more surprising.

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