Tech Shout!

On Tuesday, Nintendo Co. claimed that it has sold about 10 million of its Nintendo DS handheld game systems worldwide, which includes around 4 million in North America and more than 5 million in Japan.

According to Perrin Kaplan, vice president for marketing at Nintendo’s U.S. headquarters in Redmond, the company sold about 3 million of the handheld gaming gadgets to North American consumers in 2005. That’s on top of 1.2 million sold to North American consumers in 2004, following the system’s late November launch.

Rival Sony Corp said it has sold 3.2 million of its handheld game system, the PlayStation Portable, in North America between its March launch and mid-December. The company did not have any sales figures uptil the end of 2005.

Nintendo added that it sold 4.6 million of its other popular handheld gaming system, the Game Boy Advance, to North American consumers in 2005. That’s a fall from 7.58 million in 2004.

Kaplan said that since the offering which was launched around seven weeks back, about 550,000 people worldwide have used Nintendo DS’s Wi-Fi system for playing games online. The online game play option is free for whoever who has a wireless Internet access. Users with a regular broadband connection can buy an adapter for about $35.