Let the good times roll. A recent event in Spain prompted UK Nintendo executive David Yarnton to reveal that Nintendo now owns over 75% of the handheld market, thanks greatly to the Nintendo DS. Despite early warnings of releasing the Nintendo DS with its use of the dual screen and stylus controls, David Yarnton went on to say that the results would ultimately outweigh the risks and the greatest risk would have been to do nothing.

More inside “”We had the market to ourselves, and then when another company came along and decided they wanted to get into our swimming pool, a lot of people thought hey, that’s going to be a real problem,”” he went on.

“”For 2004 in handheld sales, which included our Game Boy and Nintendo DS, we had sales of about a million units. We then looked for 2005 as our opposition were coming in at increasing our business by 50 per cent.””

According to Yarnton, “”A lot of people said, you know, that’s crazy because the market’s just not big enough – there’s someone else coming in.””

But, he said, Nintendo did achieve that 50 per cent – and, “”Looking at this year, we’ll get another 30 per cent increase of Nintendo DS. In fact, at the moment we’re running ahead of that schedule.””

This is a huge achievement from Nintendo, allowing them to break the old barriers and reeling in the success of the Nintendo DS. The Nintendo DS is now on its way to breaking to 30 million mark of handhelds sold worldwide.

Source: Games Industry