Probably the best comparison in terms of the month it launched would be the GBA.
~30 days after launch
Japan: 1,477,217 sold 103k in the last week.
NA: 1,337,385 sold 99k in the last week
EU: 526,849 sold 53k in the last week.
Total: 3,341,451
The Japanese launch was in March, 3 months before the Euro launch. It launched in America June 11th, and Europe June 22nd.
I think one of the big reasons for the pessimism surrounding the 3DS launch is due to Japan. In 8 weeks the GBA had sold 1,877,944, and was still doing around 100k weekly. After 8 weeks the 3DS is at 897,095 (Media Create), and doing less than 30k weekly. It is nearly a million behind, and selling 3 times less. The GBA also stayed quite strong through the summer months having multiple weeks over 100k from June through August.
Although the fact that NPD numbers were so far below VGC numbers probably didn't help matters. Same with the European first week being adjusted down almost the same day they got put up I believe. Toss in the fact that a lot of people expected that 4 million initial shipment to sell out without many problems, and it makes it look worse.
