DS Lite launches in North America

Nintendo officially launched the DS Lite in North America on Sunday with a midnight opening event at its Nintendo World store in the Rockefeller Centre in New York.

Although some retailers are reported to have broken the street date on the console on Saturday, officially the first console was bought when a hundreds-strong queue of fans was allowed into the New York store just after midnight.

Nintendo gave a free copy of Brain Age to the first hundred purchasers of the DS Lite, which retails for $129.99 and is available only in the white version in North America - although other colour variants may appear at a later date.

No official figures from the launch have emerged as yet; unlike Japan, where the DS has outsold the PSP by a massive margin, the console is about neck and neck with Sony's device in North America, and Nintendo will be hoping that the launch of the more attractive Lite will help to propel its sales past Sony's.

However, the launch in general seems to have been relatively quiet, as might be expected from a redesign as opposed to a completely new platform launch, with several US retail sources reporting steady but unspectacular demand for the new hardware throughout Sunday.

The DS Lite is due to launch in Europe later this month, on June 23rd, with a price point of 149.99 Euro / GBP 99.99, with both a white and a black version of the hardware set to appear.