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Mazty on 22 August 2012
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happydolphin said:
NoirSon said:
1) It is simply that there hasn't been a cross market blockbusters like Pokemon, Brain Age or Nintendogs that can push the 3DS to DS sales territory.

2) But beyond that, it pretty much comes down to the fact that the West (or more specifically the United States) aren't into handhelds as much as Japan. Heck, in Japan, the portable devices are pretty much King since early in the first console generation. But after little less then a year, I don't think it is valid to say it isn't doing well in one territory when the difference is about a million and as I stated, the DS at around this time had its major genre busting games being first released.

1) Pokemon is true, Brain Age too, but not Nintendogs. If you mean "Like Nintendogs", but a new IP, yeah you're right.

2) Far as I know, Nintendo's handhelds have always been big in the states (/Canada/Mexico), always higher than the sales in Japan. For the DS and Gameboy, that logic extended to Europe also:

PosPlatformNorth AmericaEuropeJapanRest of WorldGlobal
2 Nintendo DS (DS) 55.31 51.40 33.01 12.43 152.15
3 Game Boy (GB) 43.18 40.05 32.47 2.99 118.69
6 Game Boy Advance (GBA) 40.39 21.31 16.96 2.85 81.51
7 PlayStation Portable (PSP) 21.12 21.46 19.02 13.03 74.63

The question is, how to explain the 3DS?

16 Nintendo 3DS (3DS) 5.70 4.83 6.30 1.39 18.22

The main answers are:

 

  • A big holiday season should be coming to start the momentum.
  • Nintendo's US trends usually 1 year later than Japan trends, and higher sales usually begin in years 2 and counting, up until the trend phases back down.
  • A lack of a marketing push for the 3DS in the West (imho).
  • Competition from smartphones.
  • A lack of compelling games to compensate for the lack of interest in the platform in the West. (like you mentioned) This should soon be fixed with NSMB2 and Animal Crossing, as well as a few others coming out in the next few months.


Smart phones as you have mentioned are key. They are "cooler" and more people have a smartphone. Plus a lot of people don't care about 3D, whereas they do care about the latest Android or IOS. Simply put, the market for handhelds is far smaller nowadays then with the DS as there is far more competition.