The rise and rise of Nintendo DS

Monday 12 March 2007
It's just two years since the UK was first touched by Nintendo's DS, but what a two years it's been. Okay, so its ugly, silver toy-like appearance might not have drawn anyone's adoration at first, but Nintendo's innovative handheld eventually won us over with its sublime gaming possibilities and a barrage of cheerful, colourful and compulsive games designed to use DS's touchscreen, microphone and dual-view to brilliant effect.

Since DS launched in the UK on 11 March 2005, we've had sell-outs, brain-taxing new genres, and that sleek redesign that added supermodel looks to DS's already impressive wealth of talents. With DS Lite, we fell in love all over again - and so did the rest of you, if the 200,000 sold in the first ten days across Europe are anything to go by.

DS has posted some mind-boggling landmarks - a record breaking 87,000 were shifted over the DS's first two days in the UK, 10m have already been sold across Europe, and last summer some bright spark calculated that Nintendo had sold one DS every two seconds across the globe since the first one was sold in Japan. And, if the meteoric rise shown in our snazzy graph suggests anything, it's that DS is destined to become one of the best selling platforms ever made. Long live DS!

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.