How Much Will 3DS Sell On Seeing the New Games

[Joelcool7]

I said between 60-80 million, honestly the fact that 3DS will only have sold an estimated 14.5 million units by January times that by a five year life cycle and you get rougholy 72-million units. With the price cut having taken place and sales still not drastically improved and the biggest names in Nintendo (MarioKart, Super Mario 3D Land, LoZ:OoT) all present. I can't see Nintendo doing all that much better in the near future.

Now I think its pretty hard to judge a consoles life time sales based on one press event. But honestly Nintendo's press event wasn't that encouraging. Infact the biggest announcement Monster Hunter 4 could end up being cancelled since Capcom's shares dropped by over 8%, while Square's stock following their new 3DS rpg announcement dropped by over 3%.

So investors in not only Nintendo but third parties have lost faith in 3DS. I think Nintendo's going to have to work very very hard just to maintain the current sales. I do not see anytime in the immediate future Nintendo being able to turn this around drastically. I believe Christmas will see sales explode but the sales won't last and come January they will be back down to these levels.

My bet is that Nintendo is going to have to try its hardest to maintain current sales. If they can then the device could sell between 60-80 million units. If Nintendo is to sell more then 80-million units they will need to do something drastic, but what is left for them to do? A re-model is not going to boost sales if released within the next year. Games, well Nintendo is throwing every big first party title they've got at it and is accomplishing nothing.

I can't see how Nintendo can pull themselves out of this rut. I think if Nintendo is successful they might be able to tie up with GBA. GBA was a very successful handheld, sure not DS but it was still very successful.

Also I think the price cut was a massive mistake. The last week of July according to VGChartz the 3DS sold 162,695 units in the week. All these units were sold at a profit. Today now that the price cuts immediate effect is over we see sales of 214,836. Thats a difference of alittle over 50,000 units. While that is definatly an improvement, Nintendo was actually turning a profit on every unit sold earlier on top of that profit they were making profit off of all their software.

The price cut means that for that extra 50,000 units Nintendo is loosing money out the ying yang. I think sales would have been maintainable at around 150,000 units with considerable profit, meaning 7,826,618 units a year with a minimum life time total of 39,133,092. Add in all the holiday seasons and the improved sales due to heavy hitting software. Nintendo would likely sell at least 45-million units each one at a profit. Then add on the software sales and Nintendo would have even larger profit margins. Of course the technology would become cheaper to manufacture and Nintendo could cut the price in 2012,2013 to like 199.99$ and maintain profitability. Nintendo could possibly have reached 60-million in sales if they played their cards right and all at a profit.

I think the price cut was a desperate move to maintain market share. Nintendo had a huge market share with DS and Nintendo wanted to maintain that share. They also saw investors freaking about how Nintendo wasn't selling as many 3DS as projected and instead of simply acknowledging they weren't going to be as successful compromised their profitability in the hopes of maintaining dominance.

Nintendo during the GameCube era was profitable. More profitable then Microsoft and even Sony, despite a much smaller market share. I have no doubt that under the right managment Nintendo could have maintained profitability with a 3DS only selling 45-60 million units at a profit.

But now Nintendo is loosing money on each unit. WiiU isn't going to sell as well as Wii and Nintendo will continue to loose money, if they don't loose money on every WiiU sold they will still be loosing too much money from every 3DS.

Nintendo's price cut essentially ended Nintendo's reign as being the most profitable game console maker. Nintendo had never really taken an operating loss until this year. Now they will have an operating loss for years to come, hopefully the dumb ass investors don't manage to destroy Nintendo due to these mistakes!