Nintendo`s business year ended. How did 3DS fare?

[gumby_trucker]

I think the hardware numbers are good, especially of you consider the effect the earthquake had on sales in Japan in particular.

The real problem from your data is the software. I can think of a few interpretations for this. The easiest one being there wasn't a killer app at launch, other than what came pre-installed on the system already. This was supposed to be Nintendogs from what I understand, but it's quite possible the title just hasn't come off as unique or different enough from the original to warrant a purchase. This may also be true for a lot of other of the 3DS' launch games such as Pilot Wings, SSFIV, Layton, Ridge Racer etc. I won't bother mentioning the games that were simply of poor quality as their sales would have been insignificant anyway...

Which leaves Steal Diver, which looks cool but definitely not a system seller.

The second reason is that DS games are still selling phenomenally well, especially outside Japan. Many customers have better products to spend their money on.

The third reason is technically the same as the second, but deserves a category of it's own: Pokemon, obviously.

even with all those, I can't understand the size of the gap between expected sales and actual sales...

Are these really Nintendo's projected numbers for 3DS software alone? Even if the 3DS sold all 4 million units by now, the attach rate needed to sell 15 mil. units of software is nearly 4:1 which is absurd for the launch of a new console...