DS Turns 21....Million Units, and Nintendo Celebrates Like a Rock Star

Last week Nintendo announced that its Nintendo DS system has sold more than 21 million units since the handheld debuted back in November 2004. The launch of the sleeker, stylish, Nintendo DS Lite earlier this year, as well as the release of favorably reviewed and heavily promoted games, such as New Super Mario Bros., can be credited to the impressive sales burst.

"We're thrilled to be announcing this milestone today," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications, "especially since Nintendo DS was North America's top-selling video game system of any type in June. We attribute this success to Nintendo's overall strategy of offering something for everyone -- from five-year-olds caring for their Nintendogs to 65-year-olds tuning their mental agility with Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day."

This is a truly remarkable feat for Nintendo because to be put in perspective, Apple's sales-blazing iPod system sold only a million units in its first year and half on the market.

On the other side of the portable gaming world, Sony has reason to be pleased as the company reports that the PSP sold 9.1 million units in software and 2.02 million hardware units in the quarter ending June 30, 2006. However, PlayStation 2 hardware didn't fare as well, dropping from 2.5 million units at this time last year to 1 million units. Software for PS2 dropped from 35 million to 33 million units.

Sony's game division caused massive damage to the company's overall profit. Although the company as a whole reported strong earnings for its last quarter, Sony Computer Entertainment dropped from 172.8 billion yen ($1.5 billion) to 122.5 billion yen ($1.1 billion). Sony cited increased research and development costs associated with the start-up of the next-gen Playstation 3. Sony expects to ship six million PS3 units by March 31, 2007.

Gamers will be able to get a sneak peak of Nintendo’s new generation console, while they take a break from head-banging and crowd surfing. The Wii console will be part of this fall’s Nintendo Fusion Tour, a nationwide festival where music and videogames come together. This year's Fusion Tour will be headlined by Hawthorne Heights and will also feature Relient K, Emery, Plain White T's and The Sleeping. Nintendo did not specify in what capacity Wii would be on hand, but playable demos are likely. The company's top-ranking executives have stated that they would like to offer consumers a chance to play Wii for themselves before the console ships.

The Nintendo Fusion Tour schedule is listed below.

• Sept. 27 Columbus, Ohio
• Sept. 28 Indianapolis
• Sept. 29 Detroit
• Sept. 30 Cleveland
• Oct. 1 Covington, Ky.
• Oct. 4 Philadelphia
• Oct. 5 Worcester, Mass.
• Oct. 7 Pittsburgh
• Oct. 8 New York
• Oct. 9 Norfolk, Va.
• Oct. 10 Winston-Salem, N.C.
• Oct. 11 Myrtle Beach, S.C.
• Oct. 12 Orlando, Fla.
• Oct. 13 Atlanta
• Oct. 14 Jacksonville, Fla.
• Oct. 15 Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
• Oct. 17 Jonesboro, Ark.
• Oct. 18 New Orleans
• Oct. 19 Houston
• Oct. 20 Dallas
• Oct. 22 Phoenix
• Oct. 24 Anaheim, Calif.
• Oct. 25 Los Angeles
• Oct. 26 San Francisco
• Oct. 27 San Diego
• Oct. 28 Las Vegas
• Nov. 2 Spokane, Wash.
• Nov. 4 Denver
• Nov. 5 Kansas City, Mo.
• Nov. 6 St. Paul, Minn.
• Nov. 7 St. Louis
• Nov. 8 Milwaukee
• Nov. 9 Des Moines, Iowa
• Nov. 10 Champaign, Ill.
• Nov. 11 Chicago

In other gaming-music marriage celebrations, legendary hip-hop act A Tribe Called Quest will reunite for more than a dozen shows, as the group will headline this year’s 2K Sports Bounce Tour, which will promote the basketball game NBA 2K7. Last year's inaugural Bounce Tour showcased the Roots. It has been eight years since A Tribe Called Quest broke up. According to Peter Bittenbender of Decon Media, the company putting together the NBA 2K7 soundtrack, as well as hip-hop producer Dan the Automator, who worked with Decon to compile the game's soundtrack, Tribe’s Phife Dawg is a video game fanatic, which helped seal the deal. Phife will appear as a playable character in the game, as will Flavor Flav, Common, the Roots' ?uestlove and a host of other rappers. The Bounce Tour kicks off Sepember 9th in Las Vegas and wraps up October 1st in Sayreville, New Jersey. NBA 2K7 will be available for Xbox 360, Xbox and PlayStation 2 this fall. A PS3 version is also in development.