#4. NINTENDO DS
Much like they did with the Wii, with the DS, Nintendo approached the market in a way that was quite different from how they had approached it in the past, with a focus on mass market appeal and accessibility. And much like the Wii, they chose to do that with what seemed like a gimmick on paper, but turned out to be a genius idea. The DS’ two screens and its implementation of a touch screen could easily have set Nintendo up for a massive failure, but their first party studios and a number of third party developers adopted the handheld’s bizarre ideas in excellent fashion. The DS’ library is a legendary one, succeeding in terms of both quality and quantity, and was chock-full of incredible titles. The DS also launched at a time when Nintendo were facing actual stiff competition in the handheld market for basically the first time ever with the PSP, and in spite of that, it turned out to be the Big N’s most successful piece of hardware to date. As it stands right now, the DS is the highest selling handheld of all time, and the second highest selling gaming system to date, behind only the PS2- looking at its impressive (and massive) library and its knack for innovation, that success is very easy to understand.
