The 1st Brain Training software title, which has made a great contribution to expanding the Japanese gaming population, is also increasing its overseas sales. As of the end of September this year, the global cumulative sales of this title reached 9.66million units.

We are now comparing the cumulative sales rates of the 1st Brain Training software in Japan, the U.S. and Europe since their respective launch dates. The growth in Europe is especially remarkable. I was the person who determined to sell this Brain Training software outside Japan, but even to my surprise, the sales rate is higher than that in Japan, and it will exceed Japanese sales in the near future, The angle of growth on the green European bar in the graph indicates that the momentum in Europe appears to be continuing.

The TV advertisement featuring the Japanese actress Ms. Nanako Matsuhima has triggered explosive sales of the 2nd edition of Brain Training in Japan. Nintendo launched this software in Europe and in the Americas in June and August of this year, respectively.

Since this 2nd edition hit the overseas market quite recently, sales can’t be expected to match those in Japan. However, European sales have already topped one million. And in the United States, the sales rate is twice that of its predecessor.

Cumulative global unit shipments of this title reached 7.53million. Between these two Brain Training software titles , we have sold 17.19million units.

When we launched the brand new home console video game machine called Wii, nobody could tell how fast the world would embrace it. Even after the actual launch of Wii, we know some people were rather skeptical about its prospects, with some saying Wii must be a passing fad.

Currently in Japan Wii has been able to ride the wave of gaming population expansion created by DS. In the United States, Wii appears to be grabbing even stronger momentum than DS has.

This chart compares how each home hardware system has sold since its U.S. launch. With its record setting speed, Wii is showing the best sales pace among all the home consoles. We are still having a hard time making enough to meet demand there. As I said, the situation is the same in the UK.

Now that we are approaching the year-end sales season and the biggest demand period, in order to supply as many Wii hardware units as possible, we have been making efforts to increase production. As of today, we have a maximum production capability of 1.8 million Wii hardware units per month, and we are going to keep this level of production for the time being.

So, our sales overseas have been strong. While the growth in the Japanese market in the mid-term was about 28% in comparison with the previous year, which is not bad at all, but the overseas sales almost tripled. We believe that the expansion of the gaming population which had taken place first in Japan is now occurring in overseas markets too. On the other hand,…

…a number of people must be questioning, “Will this trend through the mid-term continue in the future?” When we look around, Sony has introduced you to a new PSP and marked down the price of PS3. Meanwhile, Microsoft is offering several proposals including a price cut on the Xbox360. Some people ask us if Nintendo will follow suit and cut price. Luckily, we are now concentrating instead on providing enough supply to meet strong demand. So, we are not considering a price cut at all. But we have analyzed what kind of impact the measures taken by other companies have caused to our hardware sales. Let me explain about this.

Based upon the monthly NPD data, we have compiled weekly sales rates for DS and PSP in the U.S. NPD provides sell-thru data every month, with some months including 4 weeks and some months including 5 weeks. When we convert their data into a weekly sell-thru chart like this, we can clearly comprehend any changes in sales rates.

In the U.S., DS hardware faced serious out-of-stock situations at retail in January this year. So we’d like you to see the numbers beginning in February. The PSP price was marked down in March, and the new model of PSP was launched in September but, as you can see from the graph, neither of these had any significant influence on the sales pace of DS.