Nintendo e-Reader
The year 2001 marked the introduction of two new Nintendo consoles: the Game Boy Advance, which was designed by Gwénaël Nicolas and stylistically departed from its predecessors, and the GameCube. During the first week of the Game Boy Advance's North American release in June 2001, over 500,000 units were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game console in the United States at the time. By the end of its production cycle in 2010, more than 81.5 million units had been sold worldwide. As for the GameCube, even with such distinguishing features as the miniDVD format of its games and Internet connectivity for a few games, its sales were lower than those of its predecessors, and during the six years of its production, 21.7 million units were sold worldwide. An innovative product developed by Nintendo during this time was the Nintendo e-Reader, a Game Boy Advance peripheral that allows the transfer of data stored on a series of cards to the console.