Nintendo DS - is this Nintendo's most important games console?

Gamers of a certain age will undoubtedly remember the original Nintendo Gameboy. This handheld console was one of Nintendo's most successful gaming systems, thanks to a combination of low price and high desirability. As a cheaper alternative to home consoles (which had the added benefit of letting gamers play their games on the move), it was a huge success, easily dominating the fledgling 'handheld gaming' industry, outdoing its rivals, the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx.

Its successor, the Nintendo DS has gone on to replicate the Gameboy's incredible success, easily beating the PSP (PlayStation Portable) in what became known as the second handheld war. However, beyond just beating the PSP, the Nintendo DS has gone on to become the highest-selling games consoles ever, the numbers sold beating those of even home consoles. Only the PlayStation 2 has sold more units than the Nintendo DS.

Because of this, is it fair say that the DS is Nintendo's most important console? And if so, how did it achieve that position?

When the time came for Nintendo to replace their Gameboy SP, they chose to take a different route to the one they had previously taken. In fact, they chose a similar tactic as the one they would later employ with the Nintendo Wii: instead of directly trying to compete against the more powerful consoles on the market, their device would instead be based on different methods of play, and different ways for the gamer to interact with the device. In the case of the Nintendo Wii, they knew they couldn't compete, graphically, with the Xbox 360 and PS3, and so they deliberately made a console designed around motion controls; it was not designed to be high-end, it was designed to be fun.

Likewise, with the Nintendo DS, they decided that rather than compete with the processing power of the PSP, they would instead add a second, touch-enabled screen to the device, giving users an experience completely unlike Sony's handheld console.

The result of this is, combining all the different versions of the Nintendo DS, sales figures of around 125 million units.

Newer versions of the Nintendo DS have included larger screens, different card slots, and different body sizes, but the central concept of having two screens, one of which is touch-enabled, has remained the same throughout every version. Given that this is most likely the biggest reason for the success of the DS, it's unlikely that will ever change. Indeed, 'DS' is interpreted by many to actually mean 'Dual Screen', so that feature is here to stay.

The dual screens in the Nintendo DS have also led to many new styles of game being released, unlike games seen on previous platforms. For example, the proliferation and popularisation of the so-called 'brain training game' can arguably be attributed to the popularity of the Nintendo DS (the game which is responsible for this, despite medical uncertainty over its actual effectiveness, is Dr Kawashima's Brain Training). Similarly, Scribblenauts has pioneered a system of gameplay where the user is able to write on the touchscreen, and summon any item from a database of tens of thousands, in order to solve in-game puzzles.

More importantly, the Nintendo DS has been able to achieve the same thing that the Nintendo Wii did: namely, that it put gaming into the hands of non-gamers, and conversely, brought more non-gamers into the world of gaming. It only has one downside, and that is, with it being a handheld system, it is a lot easier to lose or have stolen, but then, that's what games console insurance is there for. It mitigates that one downside, and that allows a conclusion to be reached: the Nintendo DS really is Nintendo's most important console.