3DS Game Sales

[MrT-Tar]

NintendoPie said:

radishhead said:

It's not recieving much coverage (ie. advertisements, media etc.), and there is still a lot of people that believe that it's another iteration of the DS. This will change as the games arrive, because they realise that they won't be able to buy the new games on their DSes. Oh, and teenagers don't care much for it-  but that's to be expected

And did DS do a lot better or was it in this same situation at the time?

From my memory, the DS saw it's U.K release in March 2005 (however I had mine before as my Uncle picked one up while on business in New York a few months previously).  Before and immediately after launch, the critical and commercial reception wasn't that good, worse than that of the 3DS; the PSP was far far more anticipated.  Similarly to the 3DS, things changed towards the end of the year when Mario Kart DS and Nintendogs arrived.  However, if I recall correctly it wasn't until the summer of 2006 that the 3DS hit full momentum and turned into a sales beast, when the DS lite, NSMB and Brain Training arrived.  From then, the DS powered on and on, overtaking the PS2 and becoming the country's best selling platform, I think.

As I brought up in a recent Galaki thread, I get quite a few streetpass hits while out walking in London (usually hit the 10 limit, sometimes several times in a row), I also see quite a few (but not loads) of 3DS' being used on the London Underground and other rail services around the capital.  However, this is dwarfed by the amount of DS and to a lesser degree PSPs I see.  From this I infer that smartphones haven't reduced people's percieved values of handheld games that much, however, they have greatly reduced the percieved value of a handheld console and therefore one's incentive to 'upgrade' to a 3DS or PSV instead of continuing to occasionally play on their DS or PSP.