Nintendo 3DS System & Software Sales Analysis
Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima gave a presentation to talk about Nintendo’s second quarter earning results. In it, he went in-depth on the sell through trends of the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. One of the most interesting revelations is that the 3DS is still weathering just fine. Traditional models continue to sell well despite the introduction of the New Nintendo 2DS XL this past summer. Even after the introduction of the Switch, the 3DS didn’t see a noticeable drop in sales.
When looking at each individual territory, it’s clear that the western markets are slightly different than Japan. For the U.S., Nintendo 3DS hardware sales are down for the second quarter when compared to the last two years. Software sales remain better than 2015, but fall below last year’s numbers. This is mostly to do with a reduction in software titles and the fact that last year there was the Pokémon Go craze that was fueling additional sales of 3DS Pokémon titles. Europe falls in line with this and has an almost identical sales trajectory.
Japan tells a different story. Unlike the other territories, the 3DS family of systems has shot way up in sales and in fact has surpassed both last year and the year before that for the first two quarters. A huge spike in system sales occurred when Dragon Quest XI released for the system in Japan. We see the same spike in software sales, but it’s not enough to raise the bar and sell more software than last year or the year prior. It’s kind of crazy to see that hardware sales are higher the past two quarters, but software sales are not.
Nintendo expects to reach 70 million Nintendo 3DS systems sold very soon. They promise to continue to promote the product this holiday to sell more software.
[Source: Nintendo]
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
