Selling 92,000 consoles in just two days in the UK alone is an impressive feat, but it seems that the DSi could have sold even more units on launch. According to Don McCabe, managing director of the UK independent retailer Chips, the DSi has seen a significant amount of cancelled preorders and many DSi consoles which were not pre-ordered did not sell which is something retaielrs were not expecting. McCabe likens the DSi’s situation to that of the of Sony’s PSP. Good hardware, but a lack of compelling games.
“The ones that were cancelled, we weren’t getting much interest in. It’s a bit of a strange one really… because the feeling we get from customers is that they don’t know exactly why they should buy it,” McCabe said when speaking to gamesindustry.biz. “It feels a bit PSPish – its got these capabilities, but you just don’t see an app for it as such at the moment.”
Why then, if the DSi had no new DSi specific titles aside from the DSi Store to push it into the hands of consumers, did it sell the 92,000 units in a mere two days? Frankly, it’s shiny, it’s new and its made by Nintendo. “I think it has sold because people love Nintendo, they think that anything that Nintendo does is good, I think people bought it but not knowing why they bought it,” McCabe said.
This blogger has to agree with both fronts of McCabe’s argument. I would have bought a DSi on launch day of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks was released on the same day, even though it’s not a DSi specific title. Consumers need a shiny new piece of software to go with their shiny new console. For some that software may have been Pokemon Platinum, but for many, including this blogger, that softare was conspicuously missing from the DSi’s launch.
The draw of a new, shiny Nintendo product was very strong, but the draw of saving every dollar to get to E3 was even stronger. What are your thoughts on the DSi? Let us know in the comments!
Related posts:
- GameStop’s sales rise as new software sales decline and used product sales grow
- PS2 Sells 50 Million+ Consoles in North America, Breaks Console Sales Record
- Wii Vitality Sensor To Be Bundled With Software, First Title To Be “Relaxation” Themed
- Nintendo Sells More Than 3 Million Copies of Wii Sports Resort Worldwide
- Modern Warfare 2 surpasses $1 Billion in sales
