Yakuzaice on 18 April 2013
| TheLastStarFighter said: People do forget that the US was slow to adopt the DS as well. It has nothing to do with Nintendogs, or the PSP, or anything else mentioned. Nintendo handhelds lag behind by about a year in the west. This is largely due to Pokemon, which is a year behind in releases. While Japan got its last DS pokemon in 2011, the west saw B&W2 release last year. DS ate a lot of potential 3DS sales with having lots of games and such a cheap price. This year we should see a much better transition to 3DS from DS, about a year slower than Japan, just as it was with DS last gen. |
The DS took off before Pokemon came out. It started with the Lite and NSMB, at least in the US, and then just ramped up from there. In the month before Diamond and Pearl came out the DS did 509k in the US, and that was in March.
Black and White 2 was released in Japan in 2012, and it was only about 3.5 months later in the west. DS sales had largely dried up in Japan before B&W2, and it didn't do much to change that. It didn't do much for European sales either. The continued DS strength is pretty unique to the US, and seems to have little to do with Pokemon. Also if it is largely about pokemon, then why would sales trends be a year slower than Japan when Pokemon X/Y is being released around the same time worldwide?
