Over half a million copies of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? sold in first 9 weeks
10th August 2006 - The latest craze to sweep across Europe isn't a miracle diet or a celebrity workout, but a series of innovative exercises designed to help exercise the brain. Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? took Japan by storm and has now enjoyed similar success in Europe since its launch on 9th June 2006.
European consumers have gone mad for Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?, snapping up over 500,000 copies in just nine weeks from the game's launch. Sales have increased week on week since launch, with more than 60,000 copies now selling across Europe each week. This is unusual because game sales normally peak at launch and then decline throughout the product lifecycle. The European sales trend is even more impressive than that in Japan, where it took 16 weeks to sell the initial 500,000. Total sales in Japan have now reached 3 million and show no signs of declining.
Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? joins other great titles like Nintendogs in Nintendo's Touch! Generations range of software, developed to enlarge and diversify the gaming market. Inspired by a series of tests by Dr Ryuta Kawashima, a renowned Japanese neuroscientist, Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? asks users to perform a number of tasks, designed to help them exercise and energize their brains. These brain stretching exercises have been programmed onto the Nintendo DS, allowing users to stimulate and train their brain on the go in only 5-10 minutes a day.
Sales of Nintendo DS are also going from strength to strength and have been bolstered by Nintendo DS Lite. Since the launch of Nintendo DS Lite on 23rd June around 140,000 Nintendo DS are being sold across Europe each week. This sales pace is showing no signs of slowing down, even in August, which is normally a slow sales period in the video game industry.
Laurent Fischer, Marketing Director for Nintendo Europe commented:
"We are delighted that Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training has been such a huge success in Europe with thousands of people training their brains with this unique title. We hope that the continued success of this and other Touch! Generations software will help gaming as an industry expand and begin to appeal to entirely new audiences."
Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? is available across Europe on the Nintendo DS for around £20.
For all of the latest information on Touch! Generations titles please visit http://touchgenerations.com Click onto www.nintendo-europe-media.com for official information on Nintendo.
For further information please contact the Nintendo Press Office
on 0207 307 3103
About Nintendo
Nintendo Co., Ltd. of Kyoto, Japan, is the acknowledged worldwide leader in the creation of interactive entertainment. To date, Nintendo has sold more than 2.2 billion video games worldwide and more than 375 million hardware units globally, creating such industry icons as Mario® and Donkey Kong and launched franchises like The Legend of Zelda® and Pokémon. Nintendo manufactures and markets hardware and software for its popular home video game systems, including the Nintendo 64, NINTENDO GAMECUBE, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and Game Boy - the world's best-selling video game system which has sold over 193 million units. As a wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of Europe, based in Grossostheim, Germany, was established in 1990 and serves as headquarters for Nintendo's operations in Europe.