The Nintendo DS bets on touchscreens and a second pillar
A folding dual-screen handheld quietly outsells everything Nintendo had made before
Quick facts
- Manufacturer
- Nintendo
- North America launch
- 21 November 2004
- Launch price
- $149.99
- Key feature
- Touchscreen and built-in Wi-Fi
What happened
Nintendo announced its dual-screen handheld in January 2004, describing it as an experimental 'third pillar' alongside the GameCube and Game Boy Advance rather than a replacement for either, and launched it in North America on 21 November 2004 for 149.99 dollars, ten days ahead of its Japanese release. The system's lower screen was touch-sensitive and controlled with a stylus, it connected to Wi-Fi out of the box, a first for Nintendo, and it included PictoChat, letting up to sixteen nearby units chat over a local wireless network. Nintendo's longtime president Hiroshi Yamauchi reportedly said of the gamble, 'If it succeeds, we will rise to heaven, but if it fails we will sink to hell'; more than three million preorders arrived across North America and Japan before launch.
Why it matters
The DS became the best-selling handheld console of all time and Nintendo's best-selling console of any kind, using its touchscreen and approachable software library to pull in demographics, older and more casual players especially, who had never bought a Game Boy, a strategy Nintendo repeated soon after with the Wii.
How we know
GamesRadar+'s 20th-anniversary feature draws on direct interviews with developers who worked on early DS titles; Nintendo Life's own retrospective independently corroborates the launch strategy and the Yamauchi quote from its historical games coverage.
Sources
- GamesRadar+. 20 Years of the Nintendo DS · Reputable sourcegamesradar.com · The domain "gamesradar.com" is on our Reputable source registry.
- Nintendo Life. It's 20 Years Since The Launch Of Nintendo's Most Important Console · Reputable sourcenintendolife.com · The domain "nintendolife.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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