| Mandalore76 said: Again, the point is this, one year out from launch, here are the sales by the big 3 regions: North America 5.6 mil, Europe 4.6 mil, Japan 6.3 mil. That is an extremely even spread which I think should be viewed as the system selling well in ALL regions as opposed to selling well in Japan and poorly in North America and Europe. I would rather see the system selling equally well in all regions as opposed to selling 6 million units in North America and only 2 million in Japan just for the sake of saying sales in the West should be higher because of population size. But, I do see what you are saying about Japan's weekly #'s being about 20,000 higher than the US. And, you don't have to look too far to find out where that difference is currently coming from. A quick glance at the Weekly Hardware Chart for week ending June 16th will show you that a remarkable 22,000 units are still being purchased in a given week in North America. If you look at that exact same week in Japan, less than 1,000 DS units were sold. That's your weekly gap right there. When the 3DS released, Nintendo announced a commitment to continued support for the DS even while they are phasing it out. Clearly, consumers in the US are opting to purchase the DS until that support on Nintendo's end ceases completely. Once the DS is phazed out of the market, the consumers that the DS has continued to attract will jump over to the 3DS and you will see the North America/Japan #'s match-up better. The backwards compatibility of the 3DS will attract potential would-be DS owners, and current DS owners ready to upgrade to the new handheld. But, I still stand behind my belief that the system is doing well, and it's sales will only continue to grow. |
I can see what you mean, but I think it would be difficult to predict how the North American sales will go once the DS phazes out. I also wonder what it would mean about the global sales once the DS is out of the market.
