Today the Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata has told investors that he believes there is room for the DS and Wii to grow beyond its current market, according to gamesindustry.biz.

Iwata spoke at the third quarter financial briefing, predicting that the DS’s total in Japan, Europe, and the US could reach a potential 152.2 million units alone. Iwata also discussed the ‘past platform cycle’ theory which has been attributed to Nintendo’s current consoles. The theory is simply based on a belief that Nintendo’s sales have now reached a peak and will start to decline. It’s obviously based off past consoles, and the success which they have enjoyed, and applying that to the current Nintendo consoles – it gives them about a 5 year lifespan.

Iwata stated: “In the case of DS, when you apply this five-year cycle theory to a platform that has been through its 5th holiday season since its 2004 launch, a concern that DS business may slow down in the next fiscal year may appear to be logical at first glance.”

However, he the continued saying that this slow down could be avoided due to the general “gaming population expansion”, caused by the advent of casual games. (Evidently he is negating the economy with that statement, but we’ll move on.)

It’s true that the Nintendo consoles hold a grip over the entire market with their family/age/gender friendly gaming. The clever way in which they have marketed said products has also aided this control.

“Over the last few years, the driving force behind the increasing diversity and the mass appeal of gaming had been Nintendo,” said Bob Brown, author of a report concerning Nintendo’s sales, in a recent interview with the New York Times.

“My wife’s mother lives in a retirement community, and the last time we were there, everyone was excited because they were getting a Wii in there.”

Whilst this proves my above point, I do think that Nintendo do need to be aware that the West is currently in the midst of a ‘credit crunch’ and that any type of purchasing – including gaming, unfortunately – is likely to suffer a decline, and will affect predictions made.

That said, I don’t feel that Nintendo are going to suffer at all – as indeed the games industry probably won’t too much. As I’ve said before, escapism is always going to be a good selling point.

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3. PS3 Sales Estimates Are Slashed!
4. Nintendo DSi sales surpass the 500,000 mark!
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