January 3^rd, 2006 (2:56pm) - The Nintendo DS has proven to be a tremendous success for Nintendo. Thanks to games such as Nintendogs, Brain Training for Adults and the wildly popular online community found in Animal Crossing: Wild World, the DS has become the fastest selling video game platform ever in Japan in just over a year, selling through 5 million units, a feat that took the Game Boy Advance 14 months to accomplish and the PlayStation 2 17 months..

This new information comes straight from the lion’s den as Nintendo president Satoru Iwata made the announcement just prior to the Christmas holiday, stating that over 1.3 million DS units had been sold in December alone, and the month hadn’t even come to an end at that point.

DS sales hit a high point with the release of Animal Crossing: Wild World, which in just three weeks managed to become one of the DS’ first million sellers, along with Brain Training for Adults, which also broke the one-million mark that very same week. During this time period, the Nintendo DS managed to sell roughly 400,000 units during the week the Xbox 360 launched in Japan and more than 600,000 units the following week.

Interestingly, onlookers are still waiting to see how DS sales will be with the release of the second Brain Training for Adults "non-game," which launched on December 29th in Japan. Its predecessor is one of the games that helped propel the DS to its current popularity in Japan.

Additionally, Nintendo also made an announcement regarding a new "non-game" in development for the Nintendo DS that is similar to Sony’s innovative Talkman software for the PSP. Called Tabi no Yubisashi Kaiwacho (which translates to "Touch Phrasebook for Travellers"), this newest DS game will allows users to translate words and phrases into different languages by simply using the handheld’s touch-screen interface.