Oh, this is delightful. The responses of the Sony fans remind me of the N64 fans back in the day.
My last gaming console was a SNES, so perhaps my perspective comes from someone who hasn't been 'engaged' in the hobby for so long. The real issue here isn't the DS sales numbers. The issue is that the Sony fans' sense of reality is being challenged.
Guys, try to look at it from a Sony's fan perspective. They thought Nintendo was dead, that Nintendo was for little kids. They thought that if any 'threat' could challenge Sony, it would come from something like Microsoft. All those Nintendo fans who kept wishing and hoping out loud that Nintendo would 'return' were easily mocked. These sales numbers are a serious challenge to their reality of Sony forever-dominance. No wonder I keep hearing the word 'Nintendo fanboy' being used as a smear on anyone marveling about this sudden shift in the market in Japan (and perhaps America and Europe soon as well).
The merit of these sales pages is that it keeps us bounded to reality. There are people out there who live in a certain myth about their chosen console. For example, Xbox fans are stunned when I tell them the Xbox 360 flopped in Japan. I thought everyone knew that. Oh well...
Sony fans are going to have to adjust to the reality that Sony may not be as dominant as before (and there is a possibility that the PS3 will not win the console war). And frankly, I think it is ridiculous for a Sony fan to complain about 'nongames' (which are video games) that lead to the high sales of the DS without mentioning that the PSP sells primarily as a digital movie player (which has no relation to the video game industry).
But with the upcoming shifts, I think the Xbox fans are going to be hit by reality the hardest. The Xbox sold around twenty million units and is declared by them to be an 'amazing success'. The Gamecube sold around twenty million units and is declared by them to be a 'spectacular failure'. WTF? And Halo 2 is considered by them to be 'insanely popular' yet it hasn't outsold the N64 game of Goldeneye 007. Heck, Nintendogs will probably outsell Halo 2.
My point is that these sales numbers are the antidote to the disease of fanboyism. It keeps people closer to reality and doesn't let them dream, as I have heard some Xbox fans on other forums say "the Xbox 360 is selling better than the PS2 at a similar time! What an amazing success!" :lol
Nintendo fans are guilty too, of course, but they have tasted the bitter cup the longest. Not everything Nintendo is doing has been successful. Some 'non-games' have bombed such as Electroplankton. The Gameboy Micro also is considered a failure to Nintendo.
It is quite delicious to watch the bitter cup be passed to Sony fans who thought the dominance of the PS1 and PS2 meant it would continue with PSP and PS3. It still might but that is definately not assured.