Half a million Europeans train their brains on DS

Nintendo has announced that in merely nine weeks it has sold the first 500,000 copies of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain. The mental exercising game launched on June 9th and costs just twenty quid. Sales have steadily increased since launch, with more than 60,000 copies now selling across Europe each week.

In exhibiting such a steadfast appetite for the title, Europe looks set to follow the example of the Japanese launch, where Dr Kawashima's Brain Training took 16 weeks to sell the initial 500,000 sales, and has subsequently sold over three million copies. It's still going strong there too: a sharp contrast to most games, which have a very short retail shelf-life.

All this head scratching has almost certainly helped Nintendo DS Lite's debut. The leaner, cleaner DS machine arrived on June 23rd in Europe, and around 140,000 Nintendo DS are now being sold across Europe each week.

DS owners who've already seen off Dr Kawashima should read our review of the follow up, Big Brain Academy. PSP owners might consider the less impressive but still enjoyable PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient, while mobile phone owners should look out for Brain Juice from respected mobile studio Digital Chocolate.