The Nintendo DS and all of its follow-ups are really really popular in Japan, and Nintendo boss Iwata Satoru re-iterated this in the company’s financial results briefing of the fiscal year which ended in March 2009. Gaming blog Kotaku reports that this chart shows that more than a fifth of the Japanese population own a Nintendo DS.
Nintendo has sold around 26.1 million DSes to a Japanese population of roughly 127 million people. This is almost a staggering 20.5 percent of the entire population, and not just of the gamers in Japan. In America and Europe however, this percentage is much lower, with the DS being spread among about 10 percent of the populations there. Although this percentage is more in Japan, the chart suggests a greater number of units sold in the US and Europe, as compared to the number sold in Japan. These figures are as of the end of March 2009, and Nintendo announces that sales of the device are still continuing in Japan, leaving room for further growth in the markets overseas.