Now here's an interesting crinkle in the story told by the NPD numbers we're sorting through this week. Apparently feeling smug from the 800,000 copies of Pokemon Platinum it moved this month, Nintendo decided to up and disclose first week sales for the new Nintendo DSi: 435,000 units. We know that 200,000 of that was generated in its first 24 hours. Consider that first week sales in the US for the Nintendo DS Lite were 226,300 units.
Even more interesting: GameStop is taking advantage of the announcement to claim that the March NPD figures for Chinatown Wars aren't the end of the story for that game. Here's what a GameStop spokesman had to say about the game's sales in early April:
“We’ve seen a solid lift in sales of ‘Chinatown Wars’ following the launch of the DSi and believe that the product will continue to enjoy a long life at our stores as the buzz around the new handheld gaming experience continues to grow.”
We won't know how big this lift is until around this time next month, when the April NPD figures are released, but it seems very plausible that people going in to buy new DSis may have decided to pick up Chinatown Wars then, instead of in late March when a lot of other games were coming out.
If the sales lift really is a significant one driven by DSi sales, then the sales pattern for Chinatown Wars thus far may be exactly as Rockstar planned it. If you can remember back to early last month, Rockstar was already talking up Chinatown Wars primarily as a DSi companion.
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