That's because Nintendo never got big here when they were dominant.

The NES was distributed by some companies (Matell, SPACO, etc) that didn't do a good job.

The SNES launched late (~spring 1992) which allowed the MegaDrive to get a good advantage, and then not getting games like Final Fantasy, Fifa 95 or Super Mario RPG made things worse.

Is this legit? If so it's a gold mine of info. Nice find.

That literally has to be the coolest thread I've read in my entire life. There are so many interesting sets of data there that it's amazing. 

Thanks a ton, Chapset. 

Stuff like this is fascinating. Thanks for sharing!

Gameboy color probably helped some as well

Look at how consistant Gamecube was in America for the first 4 years

t3mporary_126 said: Shadow1980 said: morenoingrato said: Nintendo, I think you may have missed one console up there. Which one? They got the NES, SNES, N64, GC, Wii, and Wii U, so that covers all the home systems, and they got the Game Boy (the GB Color is included in their GB numbers), GBA, DS, and 3DS, which covers all their handhelds.

Well it shipped 770,000 in its 1/2 FY on the market.

Some REAL interesting numbers here.

N64 peak year > SNES in the US

THE LEGS ON NES IN JAPAN!!! WOW, outsold SNES and N64 in later years.

NES and SNES peak years higher than the Wii's in Japan

Also interesting to see how late the NES peaked in EU/Others. The SNES was out!

There are a lot of interesting things to note, but one springs out as extra interesting.

- From 1998 to 2006, Nintendo shipped nearly the exact same amount of hardware every year. It was between 22 and 26 million each of those years. Both last year (FY2013) and this year (FY2014), Nintendo is looking to ship between 22 and 26 million.

In other words, Nintendo is back to selling the exact same amount that it did before the DS Lite. There's no genuine reason to expect that this won't continute to be the case, either. It'll be very hard for the Wii U + 3DS to beat 26 million year, and it's quite unlikely that it will fall under 22 million, as well.

This consistency is insane. I struggle to think of a single company that's ever sold the same, +/- 10%, every year for 9 years straight. It looks like Nintendo will be back into the same area (24 million +/- 10%) for at least 3 years straight again now, with FY2013, 2014 and 2015 most likely all ending there.

Additionally, I didn't know just how atrocious the DS opening in America was. It shipped 5 million over 16 months and two holiday seasons. It's actually worse than the Gamecube did in its first 16 months and two holiday seasons.

retroking1981 said: t3mporary_126 said: Shadow1980 said: morenoingrato said: Nintendo, I think you may have missed one console up there. Which one? They got the NES, SNES, N64, GC, Wii, and Wii U, so that covers all the home systems, and they got the Game Boy (the GB Color is included in their GB numbers), GBA, DS, and 3DS, which covers all their handhelds.   Well it shipped 770,000 in its 1/2 FY on the market.

Actually, they discuss this in the thread linked to in the OP. The creator of the thread on Neogaf (who called Nintendo and got all the data, so he seems very trustworthy) said

""

Internally, the Virtual Boy was a failure that Nintendo doesn't like to recognize. As a result, they didn't give me any information it.

However, I do have some data on the console.

That "770,000 shipments" figure you often see thrown around is wildly inaccurate. It's another example of that esoteric, vague data I was talking about.

I have some figures that I believe are much more accurate to the truth. However, these didn't come directly from Nintendo Co. Ltd.,'s internal archives, so I can't guarantee their accuracy.

VIRTUAL BOY

Lifetime worldwide shipments: 1.26 million

Shipments (Japan) - 0.63 million
Shipments (The Americas) - 0.56 million
Shipments (Other) - 0.07 million

Here is the sell-through information I have on Virtual Boy:

Japanese Sales, Lifetime: 630,000
USA Sales, Lifetime: 496,000

I can vouch that the 496K is the actual number NPD has in its archives for Virtual Boy LTD sales.

""

Edit: This might seem a bit rude, so I'll point out that's in no way my intention. Up until reading that thread, I completely bought the 770k figure as well.