Interestingly enough, the country which hates Nintendo for the most part is buying more DSes than PSPs. Although the Australian handheld market isn't as large as the Japanese market, or even the American one, it's still a significant win for Nintendo. The DS has sold 227,369 units since its launch while the PSP has sold 161,623 units. The GBA is still selling strongly with 145,345 units sold since the launch of the Nintendo DS. Although the PSP saw awesome sales at launch, the DS has outsold it in 31 of the 40 weeks since then. The reason? "Consistent successes driven by the likes of Nintendogs, Mario Kart DS, and soon to be Brain Training." according to Nintendo. This has been the first time official numbers have been released for these two systems in Australia.

The people at Nintendo definitely have a lot to celebrate nowadays. Two Ninty DS games - New Super Mario Bros. and Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day for Nintendo DS ranked as the No. 1 and No. 3 best-selling games of May, according to the independent NPD Group.

NPD Group provides global consumer and retail information that helps manufacturers and retailers make more informed, fact-based decisions in order to optimize their businesses. And they are doing that very same things for Nintendo.

The good news doesn't end there, early reports from major retailers indicate that those same titles are being scooped up with the new Nintendo DS Lite in advance for Father's Day. Nice! I am pretty sure that my dad would love to play Brain Age!

According to the same group, The New Super Mario Bros. sold at a nonstop rate of roughly one every four seconds nationwide during the reporting period after going on sale May 15. It also emerged as the No.1 game of the month even if it was in stores for just 13 days.

DS Lite sales are also making Ninty smile more! Apparently, just two days after Nintendo DS Lite went on sale in the United States on June 11, it sold more than 136,500 units, with many retail outlets reporting sellouts. Also Major retailers report that sales of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day tripled over the previous week. I am sure that the guys over at Nintendo are patting each others backs for a job well done!

The numbers are in for May and some unthinkable things have happened. What are they? See if you can guess by the numbers before I explain!

PS2 - 231,616
360 - 220,877
PSP - 159,659
GBA - 152,023
NDS - 145,930
GCN - 33,040
XBX - 26,353

Yes, you see that correctly. The PlayStation Portable outsold the Game Boy Advance. This has been the first time that either the PSP or DS outsold the GBA. Maybe America is starting to move on? Then again, maybe if they keep buying GBAs, Nintendo will get a clue and localize Mother 3. The numbers also show that there are 145,930 people who were too impatient to wait for a DS Lite, which launches on June 11th. After it launches, expect the DS to push ahead of both the PSP and GBA for a good little while. It's been shown in almost all the DS game commercials, including New Super Mario Bros. The GameCube beat the Xbox this month, but that's not saying much as both systems are essentially dead. The PS2 shows it has a lot of legs left by beating out the Xbox 360, which was actually in supply for the entire month of May. Like the PSX, the PS2 will likely outsell the PS3 this holiday season.

Now, how did the software fare?

01. (NDS, Nintendo) New Super Mario Bros. - 275 692 [NEW]
02. (PS2, Square-Enix) Kingdom Hearts 2 - 168 944 [1,318,967]
03. (NDS, Nintendo) Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day - 109 432 [199,749]
04. (PS2, Sony) God of War - 106 707 [1,144,513]
05. (360, UbiSoft) Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter - 84 431 [702,484]
06. (360, Take Two) Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 83 507 [611,246]
07. (PS2, Sony) MLB 06: The Show - 81 895 [409,745]
08. (PS2, RedOctane) Guitar Hero - 67 871 [???]
09. (PS2, Take Two) GTA San Andreas - 64 520 [6,402,804]
10. (PS2, Square-Enix) Kingdom Hearts - 60 236 [2,742,017]

As you can see, even though the GBA and PSP outsold it, the DS still sold more software. The PS2 and Xbox 360 dominated the rest of the spots. Expect another burst of sales for New Super Mario Bros. when the DS Lite hits next month.Whether or not Brain Age has the same success it did in Japan remains to be seen. It's off to a better start than it was in Japan, but it received a marketing push and we don't have the books that Japan does so it might be different. Great to see games like Guitar Hero selling though.

For those wondering, Japanese Weekly Sales will now be posted monthly instead of weekly. Last week's top three consoles were the DS Lite (135,614), PSP (24,595), and PS2 (18,513). The best selling game was New Super Mario Bros. which sold 334,208 copies bringing it to a total of 1,233,726 in just two weeks while proving the Japanese do buy more than just Brain Training games.

This week was big for both the DS and PSP. Yes, that's right, the PSP got a game in the top 10! New Super Mario Bros. launched for the Nintendo DS and Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Portable hit the PSP.

01. (DS, Nintendo) New Super Mario Bros. - 899,518 [NEW]
02. (DS, Nintendo) Brain Training 2 - 86,451 [2,367,429]
03. (DS, Nintendo) Brain Training - 62,616 [2,282,759]
04. (PSP, Square Enix) Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Portable - 48,342 [NEW]
05. (DS, Nintendo) Tetris DS - 46,809 [545,666]
06. (PS2, Enterbrain) Kimikiss - 42,127 [NEW]
07. (PS2, Konami) World Soccer Winning Eleven 10 - 38,419 [694,927]
08. (DS, Nintendo) English Training DS - 37,222 [1,092,496]
09. (DS, Nintendo) Animal Crossing: Wild World - 36,610 [2,746,097]
10. (PS2, Konami) Jikkyou Powerful Pro Major League - 32,742 [155,557]

DS Lite - 285,025 [1,920,493]
PSP - 27,227 [3,482,646]
PS2 - 19,798 [22,360,570]
GBA SP - 6,652 [15,643,793]
DS - 4,126 [6,526,951]
GBM - 2,013 [507,824]
X360 - 1,242 [120,410]
GCN - 1,116 [4,104,205]
GBA - 44 [???]
Xbox - 8 [474,533]

New Super Mario Bros. did astronomical numbers. In one week, it has sold more than Super Mario Sunshine did in total in Japan. Obviously Nintendo's strategy of luring in non-gamers with the Brain Training games has worked. Now they're buying "real" games too! New Super Mario Bros. is the first traditional 2D sidescrolling Mario game since Super Mario World for the SNES 15 years ago. Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Portable is a board game featuring characters from the universes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

The DS Lite has reached even higher numbers this week, likely due to New Super Mario Bros. The DS is basically confirming earlier reports that it's not being produced any more. The PSP saw a sales increase as well, maybe owing to the debut of a game combining the two most popular franchises in Japan - Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. The other handhelds, the three designs of the Game Boy Advance, stayed basically the same. Actually, they should do that for the NGage over here... I'd buy one.

The PS2 is still selling pretty well in Japan. You'd think everybody would have one by now! The Xbox 360 and GameCube look like they're in a struggle against each other while the Xbox has given up all hope. Yay to the eight people who bought one this week in Japan! They should take a picture of each person who does and give them a medal or something!

Previously, we reported that New Super Mario Bros. sold about 480,000 copies in its first day. Yesterday, Nintendo had a conference in which they informed everyone that the game had sold over 900,000 in its first four days. This is an astronomical number. The only games to beat it in recent years are Final Fantasy XII, Dragon Quest VIII, and Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green. Nintendo is also proud of the DS Lite which sold 950,000 units last month and Tetris DS which shipped 800,000 copies. We'll have full numbers for you in our weekly sales update on Thursday!

Today's announcement just brings great hope that Nintendo may do another 2D Mario soon. Hopefully we won't have to wait ten years this time!

How many consoles did Nintendo ship and what are the big money makers? Well, we have that information for you today. All numbers are for the 2005 fiscal year which is from April 1st, 2005 - March 31st, 2006.

• GameBoy Advance - 8.33 million units
• GameBoy Advance SP - 6.44 million units
• GameBoy Micro - 1.83 million units
• Nintendo DS - 11.46 million units
• Nintendo DS Lite - 0.58 million unit
• GameCube - 2.35 million units

Obviously, the handheld sector is the big money maker for Nintendo. They only had to ship 2.35 million GCN units. The Nintendo DS, one of the fastest selling consoles Nintendo has seen, shipped about 12 million units in the 2005 fiscal year. The GBA also sold very well. Although I think Game Boy Advance means GBA SP + GBM + GBA (original). I just don't believe they shipped out 8.33 million original GBA units as opposed to 6.44 million GBA SPs. Do you even see original GBAs at stores anymore?

Software was as follows:

• GameBoy Advance - 59.36 million units
• Nintendo DS - 49.95 million units
• GameCube - 32.79 million units

In terms of software, the GBA saw the most games. With its huge userbase, it's not surprising. The DS is also getting a lot of attention and I'd expect that 2006 will bring much more software for the DS than the other systems. Nintendo obviously agrees because this is what they've forecasted for the 2006 fiscal year which ends March 31st, 2007.

• GameBoy Advance - 2.5 million hardware units / 30 million software units
• Nintendo DS - 16 million hardware units / 70 million software units
• GameCube - Not Available / 15 million software units
• Wii - 6 million hardware units / 17 million software units

Nintendo doesn't expect to sell many GBAs although North America seems to be picking up more of those than the DS and PSP. They also seem to have given up hope on the GCN and will instead be focusing their energy on the DS and upcoming Wii.

New Super Mario Bros. launched in Japan yesterday (May 25th, 2006). How much did it sell? 480,000 copies! This beats the previous record holder for fastest selling DS game, Brain Training 2. Brain Training's record was reaching 414,556 over the course of four days! This proves that Mario's platforming adventures are definitely still in high demand. The results will show quite clearly when the official Media-Create numbers come in next week. What you see to the left is the Japanese box for the game. It's in a yellow casing to resemble the yellow Famicom cartridge of the original Super Mario Bros.

The sales this week in Japan weren't anything special. Only one new release broke the top ten. Hardware sales are at a very low point although the DS Lite doesn't seem to be affected by it at all.

01. PS2 hack//G.U. Vol. 1 - 90,946 [NEW]
02. NDS Brain Training 2 - 61,679 [~2,281,000]
03. NDS Tetris DS - 50,937 [~499,000]
04. NDS Brain Training - 45,196 [~2,220,000)
05. PS2 Winning Eleven 10 - 44,530 [~657,000]
06. NDS Animal Crossing: Wild World - 33,470 [~2,709,000]
07. PS2 Powerful Major League - 33,278 [~123,000]
08. NDS English Training - 29,250 [~1,055,000]
09. NDS Pokemon Ranger - 17,935 [~532,000]
10. NDS Mario Kart DS - 16,119 [~1,383,000]

DS Lite - 160,182 [1,635,468]
PSP - 24,457 [3,455,419]
PS2 20,633 [22,340,772]
NDS - 16,867 [6,522,825]
GBASP 6,174 [15,637,141]
GBM 2,245 [505,811]
Xbox360 1,403 [119,168]
GC 1,051 [4,103,089]
GBA 25 [??]
Xbox 20 [474,525]

Every console except the DS Lite, Nintendo DS, and Xbox 360 (48 consoles more!) sold less this week than last week's already low numbers. The DS numbers have been getting a bit erratic as of late. It looks like the cause of that is supply issues. Finding the console is proving to be almost impossible. What Nintendo will do when they launch in other countries next month will be interesting.

Also, the Nintendo DS has now sold (not shipped) over 8 million units in Japan alone. This took the console just under 18 months making it the fastest selling console in Japanese history. The DS and DS Lite combined are now at 8,158,293 while its competitor, the PSP, is at 3,455,419. Both handhelds launched in December 2004.