DSi XL Sales In

According to NPD in this report, the DSi XL pulled in 141,000 sales in March, its debut month. While this may sound impressive, the whole DS line sold 700,800 units for the month. Of course, the DSi XL only had one week for sales. Still, you have to wonder if Nintendo will be recouping the development and production costs any time soon. Especially when they continue to talk up their new handheld, the 3DS, which will have the inevitable effect of continuing to depress DS sales.

It still seems to me that DSiWare offers tremendous potential for additional profits if properly exploited. I think one of the key advantages of the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad hardware is the ease of buying new software. I may have complaints about how Apple organizes its App Store (or, more precisely, how it doesn't organize it) but they sure make it easy to give them money. Nintendo should be making a lot more on titles where they don't have to create and ship cartridges and packages. They should use this to encourage lower-cost software, and work hard to make the process of buying easy.

Push that hard while you secretly work away on new hardware, and then when you launch the new hardware you'll have an even better online sales structure in place. Yes, the retailers may scream (like they did with the PSP Go), but as long as you can still sell them packaged goods for the platform, they won't complain. Especially if this process can mean more hardware sales...