DS Lite breaks UK sales record for hardware

And might break it again before Christmas

10 December 2008 18:37 GMT / By Verity Burns

Despite the economy being in tatters, Nintendo's DS Lite has broken the all-time weekly sales record for hardware in the UK for the second time.

Figures from ELSPA and GFK-ChartTrack show that the DS broke the record in week ending 6 December, or week 49 in sales talk.

The DS Lite already held the previous record from the run-up to Christmas 2007, taking the crown from Sony's PSP which smashed sales records during its first week on sale in September 2005.

Amazingly, GFK-ChartTrack have even predicted that the console could break the record again before the end of 2008.

GFK-ChartTrack director Dorian Bloch said: "The DS Lite has beaten its own record, almost exactly a year after it first took the title. It wasn’t a huge jump, but it bodes well for the remaining weeks. The interesting thing is that we can now assume that if there is still some DS Lite stock in the land in the next couple of weeks, the record will go again".

"Over the last couple of years, week 48 has been big, then the market has gone up a little more in week 49 – then there’s an almighty jump in week 50 and 51".

The DS Lite has shown a quite impressive staying power, still going strong after its release in June 2006. Whether the DSi will do quite as well over here remains to be seen. When we get a release date, of course.

Full tags

Gaming, Nintendo DS, Games industry, Nintendo, PSP, PS2, Activision, Sony, Microsoft