As picked up by all the major news sites, the Nintendo DS is now officially the fastest selling game console ever sold in Japan. In about 20 months, Nintendo sold 10 million units of their handheld wonder. To get a grasp on a number like that, take the following over-simplified mathematical explanation—since launch, the DS has averaged a sustained rate of one console sold every 6 seconds in Japan for the past year and a half. Even more impressively, the DS has seen a recent upswing in sales (thanks to the release of the DS Lite), selling 2.34 million units in the past two months, for an average of about 1 DS sold every 2 seconds.

It should also be noted that, unlike some of their competitors, Nintendo has based these numbers on consoles sold, not consoles shipped, meaning that all 10 million of these units really are sitting in the hands of Japanese consumers. Now, with about 8% of Japan’s population owning a DS, it should be interesting to see how long Nintendo can sustain this astounding sales rate.

See the press release linked below for more amazing figures on world-wide sales, straight from the source.