DS Lite sells 136k in two days

One of the hottest gadgets currently on the market is Nintendo's DS Lite, a redesigned version of the dual-screened handheld originally released in 2004. The portable has been scarce in Japan, where new shipments have been regularly selling out as gamers snatch them up.

America was introduced to the handheld this past Sunday, and it appears that DS Lite fever isn't confined just to Japan. Nintendo claims more than 136,500 DS Lites were sold in the unit's first two days on sale in the United States.

A spokesman for the company told Reuters that the DS Lite is on pace to match the sales figures of the original DS, which sold half a million units in its first 10 days in retail. Nintendo also says that the new version of the DS Lite is also outpacing the initial sales numbers of another redesigned handheld--the Game Boy Advance SP.

Nintendo sold more than 1 million DSs in its first month in both America and Japan, and by late April 2005, it sold more than 5 million units worldwide. As of late March, the combined total of DSs sold was more than 16 million worldwide. The DS Lite will be released in Europe on June 23.

The DS Lite is also helping spur sales of DS software. Since the DS Lite's launch, Nintendo says that relative to the previous week, sales of New Super Mario Bros. doubled and sales of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day tripled.