Nintendo may not have released its Wii console in South Korea yet, but its DS Lite hit the country back in January of this year and has already taken it by storm, beating out the competitors seemingly with ease. Now some anecdotal evidence has come in about the company’s performance.

Recently UK website Cubed³ got the chance to fly out to South Korea to see first-hand just how well Nintendo is performing over there and the general consensus was that things are definitely looking rosy right now. The article begins by pointing out what we already know: PlayStation Portable sales have reached a plateau, the Xbox 360 never really took off due to low presence by Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 is seen as far too pricey to be worth the investment. Also, Nintendo of Korea has already confirmed 270,000 DS Lite units were sold in the first four months on sale there, and given the continued strong presence for the rest of the year it would be surprising if that figure had not already more than doubled to near enough 600,000 units by now.

Basically, from a little bit of digging and investigating, it was discovered that games like nintendogs, Big Brain Academy, English Training and Namco Bandai’s Quickspot are all popular sellers at retail, but the big hitters in the playground are the Mario trio of Super Mario 64 DS, New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS, with the split between boys and girls being quite even and the age ranges interested in the DS Lite now ranging from as low as three up to around fifteen and sixteen. However, it was also noted that people in their mid-to-late twenties had also been intrigued by the system, although were unsure what to get for it, with some considering English Training but being unsure if it had been proven as a useful tool for learning the language.

In fact, it was this older group that had heard of Wii, thanks to a recent television documentary on the system, which focused on the five-in-one package Wii Sports. It is still unknown whether Nintendo of Korea will go down the Western route of bundling this package with Wii or do as in Japan and release everything separately. You would presume it would be bundled, though, since Nintendo still has a lot to prove in South Korea right now and cannot take anything for granted.

Wrapping things up, the article finishes with a quick list of Third Party games that have just been released:

• MySims (Electronic Arts),
• SimCity DS (Electronic Arts),
• Cooking Mama (Majesco),
• DS Chueok ui Donghwa Touch RO Puzzle (Zoo Keeper remade by Korean developer SKonec),
• Samgukji DS (Koei, ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ in the West),
• Hoshigami Remix (Arc System Works)

This is on top of recent Nintendo releases of Kirby: Mouse Attack (’Squeak Squad’ in the US) on 13th September and Picross DS just a few days ago. Plus Nintendo also has Elite Beat Agents coming on 11th October, as well as Yoshi’s Island DS on 8th November, and Metroid Prime Hunters and Online Mah-jong at some time in the near future.

Be sure to check out the full in-depth report here for more information.

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