It appears that Nintendo of Europe are not too concerned about the launch of the PSP next month, as they are predicting a 50 percent growth in handheld gaming sales this year.

Nintendo's European president Satoru Shibata has spoken about how he sees Nintendo's future in Europe. He is expecting that there will be over three million DS consoles sold this year. "We would like to sell over three million units of Nintendo DS across Europe by the end of 2005, and one million units in the UK alone. Coupled with our forecasts on Game Boy Advance SP and Game Boy Micro, we are looking at a massive 50 per cent growth in the Nintendo handheld business in the UK."

It seems his prediction is likely to come true, according to Nintendo's UK boss David Yarnton who has revealed that, "year to date - January to July - like for like sales of Nintendo handheld consoles are up 91 per cent, and that's in an environment of retail doom and gloom."

"That's almost double the market of the previous year," he continued. "38 per cent of all hardware sold this year in the UK is now attributable to Nintendo handheld consoles. In retail sales terms, by the end of 2005, Nintendo handheld hardware and first- and third-party software sales will account for a massive GBP 250,000,000 in sales in the UK alone."

With the PSP due to launch in just under two weeks there are concerns that Sony will "take over" the handheld market, in a similar vein to how they did with the PlayStation. However, Nintendo are adamant they are not to be beat. "Despite over 15 years of ownership of the portable games space, we're not planning to sit back and rest on our laurels. We created portable gaming, and we're not moving out."

Nintendo also spoke of their biggest upcoming game for the DS, Nintendogs, which is due out in October. "The launch of Nintendogs was responsible for making Nintendo DS into the best selling game system in Japan, in fact selling two to three times the rate of the PSP - both hardware and software," Shibata gladly mentioned.

"We have also seen in Japan that a massive 40 per cent of purchasers of Nintendogs are females - clear testament that we are expanding the market, and people's very perception of what a videogame is."