While America and Europe will have to wait until next year to get their hands on the new DSi, its weekend launch in Japan saw sales pass 170,000 within the first 48 hours.

According to the publisher of the popular Japanese magazine Famitsu, initial shipments of the ¥18,900 ($179) handheld almost completely sold out within minutes.

Reports of brisk DSi sales must be music to the ears of Nintendo, which unveiled the souped-up handheld last month. Unlike ithe DS Lite, the new model sports a Web browser, music playback, an SD card multimedia storage, a 3-megapixel camera, a smaller inward-facing camera, photo editing software, and larger and brighter dual screens. The new functionality comes at the expense of the Game Boy Advance cartridge slot, which is absent altogether.

Nintendo's introduction of the DSi comes as the DS platform is losing ground to its rival, the PSP. Sony's handheld, which boasted Web-browsing and multimedia functions from the outset, has seen its sales explode in Japan thanks to the craze surrounding the multiplatinum title Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G.