And the shame here is the amount of utter SHIT that is on the DS that appeals to the broad market of soccer moms and old people. Seriously, fucking HORSE videogames and PETZ and OH LOOK NOW YOU CAN LIVE YOUR DREAM OF BEING A CAREER DENTIST. Christ, for every neat game, there's 50 shovelware titles that move units to people that have zero interest in any of the things that made the gaming industry in the first place.
True, but what core gamer is buying a DS for those kinds of games anyway? The only pet game I have on the DS is Nintendogs and that was a Sage program gift, otherwise the kind of "gamer games" I've been playing are the only kinds of games I'll continue to keep buying and I imagine most Nintendo DS owners who aren't part of that broad market sector are in the same boat. There is a lot of software love spread around the DS across a large majority of genres out there, although as of late it does seem to have been a haven for RPGs compared to most. Although I did have the misfortune of seeing shipment after shipment of Imagine and Petz games come into our store last holiday season while our first shipment of Contra IV (only eight copies) took nearly the entire time to sell through and our second and last shipment didn't sell through until a clearance period we had earlier this spring. Such a shame.
Still, as long as it doesn't screw with the games I like to play, I've no real issue with non gaming types finding some avenue of interest into gaming.