As brothawiz already said there is quite a large stigma for adults and older teens to play their DS's (Or 3DS's) in public. In the US (where I live) the DS sold muuuch more to young children. My two little brothers both have one and they are 7 and 4 respectively. Playing a crappy casual game on your phone is just fine, but god forbid you try to play a REAL game on a device specifically made for gaming.
Japan doesn't have to deal with that. Their culture is much more into gaming and specifically handhelds. Also, and I know i'm not the majority of people in the US (i'm so far from x_X) Most of the games i'm eagerly awaiting for the 3DS are games that i'm not sure will ever come to the West anyway. KH3D, FE, MH,Bravery Default ect. I'm hoping all of them will but i'm not so sure on the last two. I'm sure a lot of people are just waiting for that one game they are dying to play to finally get out in the west.
Which leads me to my next point. Localize more, and try to work on global launches. Once a game has a global launch you can spend the rest of the time hyping it up to all over the world!
Just what I think anyway, a lot of this has already been said, but yeah.
