THE BUZZ: When it was originally announced and launched, many considered the Nintendo DS to be a “third-pillar” for Nintendo—an interesting side project in addition to the GameCube and GameBoy Advance, but not anything that would be around for a serious length of time.

Instead, the DS has gone on to be the second-best selling piece of video game hardware of all time, locked in a race with the PlayStation 2—currently the best-selling piece of gaming hardware—to see which one will end up the victor.

Today, Nintendo announced that the DS has hit another milestone: over 50 million units sold in the United States. To put that in perspective, as of a few month ago, there were around 55 million Xbox 360s sold in the entire world, or 52 million PlayStation 3s sold around the globe.

EGM’s TAKE: I initially purchased a Nintendo DS for one reason: a friend of mine in Japan ended up getting a job at Nintendo, and the first game she worked on was WarioWare Touched. Now, I own 140+ Nintendo DS games, and it’s one of my favorite gaming platforms of all time. So, contrats DS—you’ve earned it.

How do you feel about the Nintendo DS? Does it deserve to become the best-selling game hardware, or should that honor still belong to the PlayStation 2?