Eighteen months since it first launched and the DS breaks through a significant barrier...

Nintendo has today confirmed that over 21 million Nintendo DS systems have been sold since the platform first launched in November 2004, just eighteen months ago. Breaking down the stats, that equates to one DS sale every two seconds.

The company isn't stopping there with the number crunching however, instead pointing out that across its first nineteen months, Apple only managed to sell one million iPods.

"We're thrilled to be announcing this milestone today," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications, "especially since Nintendo DS was North America's top-selling video game system of any type in June. We attribute this success to Nintendo's overall strategy of offering something for everyone - from five-year-olds caring for their Nintendogs to 65-year-olds tuning their mental agility with Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day."

By comparison however, sales of the GameBoy Advance SP and Micro have dropped significantly in recent months, although Nintendo expects up to six million Wiis to be sold by the end of the fiscal year in March 2007.

We'll have more news shortly...