Nintendo's Iwata: DS is in need of a hit

At Nintendo's recent financial results briefing, company president Satoru Iwata admitted that DS sales in Europe were declining, and the console is in need of a big hit title.

"Nintendo DS hardware in Europe are showing a year-on-year decrease," Iwata said, and this despite the launch of the DSi XL.

"The sales leap was comparatively smaller than that in April 2009, when we launched Nintendo DSi in Europe," he said.

But seeing as the hardware is now on its fourth iteration, it's hardly surprising that sales are slower.

Still Iwata has a plan; "We recognise that we are coming to the stage where we need to offer a hit title that can gain social phenomena and catch our customers' attentions."

The briefing also showed that Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver sold a 8.4 million copies, the Nintendo 3DS is still on track to be shown at this year's E3 games conference and Pokemon Black and White are due for Japanese release later this year.