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Fils-Aime: We're not satisfied with $5 billion sales

NoA president expects 100 million DS sales by March '09, Pokemon once again drives handheld at retail

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has said that although the company has seen combined sales revenue for Wii and DS hardware of USD 5 billion to date, he's still not satisfied.

Referring to last year's sales performance, Fils-Aime said that he was "not closed to being satisfied," but this year is looking stronger as lifetime sales for Wii in North America hit 10 million according to NPD data, and DS sales at 20 million.

Sales of these two consoles "alone now combine to represent more than 5 billion dollars [of revenue] at retail in the US."

While 2007 was expected to be the peak sale period for DS, sales in 2008 are up 12 per cent over last year, said Fils-Aime, speaking at Nintendo's E3 conference at the Kodak Theatre today.

"Hardware sales are always driven by key software franchises, and this spring that key franchise was Pokemon," he said of the DS momentum.

Both new Pokemon titles – Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness combined to sell 600,000 units in six weeks between them.

The Pokemon franchise has now sold 180 million titles.

Nintendo expects "total DS worldwide sales will grow to almost 100 million systems" by the end of Nintendo's current fiscal year, March 2009, added Fils-Aime.

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Matt Martin

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Matt Martin joined GamesIndustry in 2006 and was made editor of the site in 2008. With over ten years experience in journalism, he has written for multiple trade, consumer, contract and business-to-business publications in the games, retail and technology sectors.