Nintendo: 3DS likely to outperform DS's first-year sales in US
Apparently 3DS sales aren't so bad. Or, more accurately, 3DS sales are not great, but DS sales were also pretty bad at first. It's all relative. The company said today that the 3DS is "poised" to sell more 3DS systems in its first year than the DS did. The 3DS system is over 1.65 million units sold in the US, and the DS sold 2.37 million in its first year, "with approximately 50 percent of those sales occurring in the holiday time frame."
It's worth remembering that the DS was pretty bad in that first year, and didn't become a sales sensation until early 2006 with the introduction of the DS Lite. So that's not the most impressive milestone. In fact, we would hope a 3DS with both a (good!) Mario game and Mario Kart will be able to outsell a system that had neither.
Nintendo reported "more than 250,000" 3DS systems sold in the US in October, along with "nearly 180,000" DS units and "nearly 250,000" Wiis. Of course, all those numbers, along with every other game system's sales numbers, will go up significantly in the next two months. We'll have more NPD information this evening.
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Nintendo News
Nintendo 3DS Poised to Surpass First-Year Sales of Nintendo DS
In its eighth month on the market, the Nintendo 3DS™ system crossed 1.65 million units sold in the U.S., according to the NPD Group, which tracks video game sales in the United States. This milestone puts the platform on track to surpass the first-year total of Nintendo DS™, the best-selling game platform in U.S. history.
The Nintendo DS system sold 2.37 million units in its first 12 months (November 2004-October 2005), with approximately 50 percent of those sales occurring in the holiday time frame. With its first holiday season and the launches of the Super Mario 3D Land™ and Mario Kart™ 7 games on the horizon, Nintendo 3DS is poised to eclipse that number and establish a new benchmark for hand-held gaming launches in the United States.
"With a massive lineup of software on the way and the first-year sales record of Nintendo DS in its sights, Nintendo 3DS enters its first holiday season with a full head of steam," said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing.
Other Nintendo news from the month includes:
Nintendo sold more than 675,000 combined hardware units in October. This includes more than 250,000 units of Nintendo 3DS, nearly 250,000 Wii™ systems and nearly 180,000 units of the Nintendo DS family of systems.
For the year, Nintendo has sold a combined 7 million hardware units and more than 55 million units of software have been sold for Nintendo platforms. Both of these numbers should increase with the Nov. 20 launch of The Legend of Zelda™: Skyward Sword for Wii.
Both Wii, up 8 percent year over year, and Nintendo DS, up 23 percent over the previous month, demonstrated strong momentum heading into their respective sixth and eighth holiday seasons. In total, the two platforms have sold more than 87 million combined hardware units and more than 540 million combined units of software in the United States.
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