Animal Crossing: New Leaf at 2.3M sold in Japan, bringing in new female 3DS owners
Japanese sales of Animal Crossing: New Leaf are at around 2.3 million, with 500,000 of those coming from digital downloads alone. Those ever-storming sales, both overall and digital, are arguably not as surprising as a stat revealed to Nikkei by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. As translated by Siliconera, Iwata said women represent 56 perecent of those buying a 3DS with the game, far greater than the 3DS' female install base of 31 percent.
Animal Crossing has long been put forward as being popular with women, and these figures show the series' 3DS entry certainly is in Japan. Iwata also noted the largest group of all New Leaf purchasers in the first three weeks of sales was 'female, aged 19-24.' The Nintendo chief used this to play down suggestions of smartphones being a risk to gaming devices like the 3DS.
"People often debate whether smart phones will eliminate the need of consoles for gaming," said Iwata. "When you look at these numbers, women of ages 19 to 24 are some of the core users of smart phone games. They say casual female gamers don't need a console, but after seeing these figures, we'd really like to reconsider that and the true value of console gaming."
