2004 sees the portable system sell a million units in the UK alone, and becomes the best-selling hardware format over Christmas…

Nintendo have today announced that the GameBoy Advance SP sold 1 million units during the course of 2004 in the UK alone, bringing the total number to 4 million since it launched in Britain back in 2001. The news has come just months after Nintendo dropped the price of the system to £69.99, fuelling a 45% increase in hardware sales.

Nintendo are sure to be happy with the news, and in a statement Head of Marketing at Nintendo UK, Dawn Paine said, “With one million Game Boy Advance SPs sold in the UK in 2004 alone, this takes total Game Boy Advance sales figures to an astounding 14 million across Europe to date. The handheld games industry continues to grow and grow, and these figures highlight that Nintendo is still the key player. 2004 has been a great year for the Game Boy Advance SP and for the Nintendo GameCube, we are extremely excited to watch another exciting year unfold.”

How the sales will be affected by the release of the DS and PSP in the coming months will be interesting to see, but it’s worth pointing out that the GBA has continued to sell very well in Japan even after the launch of the DS in December.

We’ll have more shortly…