Week 13! And... something special!
DS 06 -- 211,211
3DS 13 -- 66,788
It's the final week of the first quarter. DS sales continue to skyrocket with only a few small releases, including Xenosaga I & II (15k FW), San-X Land: Theme Park de Asobou! (9k FW), Mar Heaven: Karudea no Akuma (8k FW), and Contact (7k FW). With no new releases in the chart, 3DS sales fall by almost 10k. The DS outsold the 3DS this week by greater than 3-to-1.
Week 14 data is already available (and that update will follow in the next few days), so in place of the usual preview, this time I'm doing a First Quarter Summary.
The 3DS enjoyed an easy lead for the first half of the quarter, with the DS beginning to dominate in the second half. The 3DS rode its Holiday boost into the new year, with its first week of the quarter being its best. Its second-best week was week 6, when Dragon Quest VII 3D was released. The DS's top 5 weeks this quarter were the final 5; the turning point of the quarter was clearly week 9, the week of the DS Lite launch. The 3DS beat the DS in 7 out of 8 weeks before the Lite launch, while the DS won all 5 weeks after.
As I mentioned, the 3DS built up a decent lead for the first two months, with the sales gap peaking in week 8. However, in just 5 weeks since the DS Lite launch, the 3DS's lead fell from nearly 500k to under 100k.
Nevertheless, the overall victor of the first quarter was the 3DS... barely.
FIRST QUARTER END
DS 06 -- 1,226,814
3DS 13 -- 1,299,749
Adv 3DS +72,935
