An industry analyst has gone out on a limb today by suggesting that the Nintendo DS could end up being the best-selling videogames platform in history, outselling the current record holder, Sony's PlayStation 2. David Cole from DFC told Next-Gen.biz that the, "DS has the potential to be the best-selling interactive entertainment platform ever.”

He added that while the PlayStation Portable was selling less than the DS at present, both systems will continue to drive the growth of the portable gaming market to over $10 billion USD by the end of 2007.

“Under the right scenario, by 2011 the combined installed base of the DS and PSP could exceed that for the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360,” said Cole in a statement.

As of mid-January this year, the Nintendo DS and its Lite re-design have sold around 40 million units since the platform was first made available in November of 2004. Impressive as that figure is, Nintendo's dual-screened machine still has a long way to go if it's to surpass the sales figure attributed to the mighty PS2. By December of 2006, Sony's second home console had shipped a monstrous 111 million units worldwide.