According to Thomson Financial, Nintendo’s 2008 plan includes the launch of a "localized" edition of its DS system in Taiwan. The company intends to release the device later on this month for Taiwan and sometime at the end of the year on the Chinese market.

Last month Nintendo, currently largest portable game console maker in the world, announced it would bring the Wii home console in Taiwan starting July 12.

The DS was released in South Korea last year; since then, 1.4 million units of the console have been sold, as well as 2.6 million game titles.

About five weeks ago, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that the company does not intend to lower the prices of its Wii and Nintendo DS video games for the following fiscal year. In fact, Wii’s price has been kept constant ever since its release in November 2006.

Nintendo seems to be thinking big, as more than 28 million DS units are expected to be sold. Wii’s situation is still a bit delicate, since cases in which customers cannot purchase the game continue to be reported. At one point, the company was considering the possibility of increasing production to no less than 2.4 million units a month. At the end of May 2007, Nintendo announced its plan to have more than 35 million Wii owners worldwide by 2012. Judging by the way things are going right now, with the continuous expansion of the market, there is a very high chance that expectations will be significantly exceeded.