Week 39! Special Third-Quarter End Edition!
DS 06 -- 276,839
3DS 13 -- 136,122
DS sales skyrocket in the final week of the third quarter of 2006, nearly doubling from last week with the release* of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, heralding the start of the franchise's fourth generation. The two titles open to tremendous sales and will be the best-selling games in Japan for the year. The 3DS sees a couple of very small releases, which fail to prevent hardware from falling to about 136k. Still, despite two weeks of declining hardware sales in the wake of Monster Hunter 4's release, this week ranks among the 3DS's top 5 so far this year. For the sake of perspective, however, 136k would be a below-average week for the DS in 2006, even without factoring the fourth quarter into the mix.
THIRD QUARTER SUMMARY:
The weekly comparison was fairly straightforward this quarter until September, when all hell broke loose. The sudden jump in 3DS sales is (obviously) due to the release of Monster Hunter 4. The 3DS managed to best the DS for just two weeks this quarter, but that's better than it fared the previous quarter. I skipped the second quarter entirely, as it was pretty boring, but if you're interested in that chart it's right here. No sense withholding information at this point.
Instead of the sales gap chart (which is now visible in the OP and updated weekly), I present the top 10 weeks of hardware sales overall for the DS in '06 and the 3DS in '13 as of the end of the third quarter.
| Rank | Week & Console | Sales | Probable Cause |
| 1 | Week 21 -- DS | 296,993 | New Super Mario Bros. release |
| 2 | Week 1 -- 3DS | 294,665 | Post-Holiday high |
| 3 | Week 37 -- 3DS | 284,331 | Monster Hunter 4 release |
| 4 | Week 17 -- DS | 278,929 | Tetris DS release |
| 5 | Week 39 -- DS | 276,839 | Pokemon Diamond/Pearl release |
| 6 | Week 29 -- DS | 256,866 | Personal Trainer: Cooking release |
| 7 | Week 35 -- DS | 232,747 | Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland??? FFIII? |
| 8 | Week 14 -- DS | 213,075 | ????? |
| 9 | Week 13 -- DS | 211,211 | Pokemon Ranger?? |
| 10 | Week 24 -- DS | 203,269 | Digimon World??? |
The really interesting thing (to me) is that the 3DS's highs are as great as the DS's highs. Where the 3DS has fallen short so far this year are in those intervening weeks between major releases. Even in weeks with small releases or none at all, it was as though people were waiting for even the slightest excuse to buy a DS, while potential customers in 2013 are prepared to wait for that one big game they've been anticipating to release, whether it's Monster Hunter 4 or Pokemon X and Y. Take week 24 of DS sales, for example: DS hardware spiked by roughly 80k from the previous week on the back of a few new releases totalling roughly 70k in sales, with even the best-selling of the new games (Digimon World) selling under 50k. Yet even when the 3DS had new releases selling over 200k, it wasn't even close to those 200k hardware sales until Monster Hunter 4 came along.
Though the 3DS fared better this quarter than it did in the second, the DS still increased its lead by over one million units since the end of June. The DS has an overwhelming advantage as we head into the climactic finale of this comparison, a showdown between Pokemon generations fueling monstrous Holiday-season sales.
THIRD QUARTER END
DS 06 -- 5,827,742
3DS 13 -- 3,125,755
Adv DS +2,701,987
Fourth-Quarter preview: DS sales take a breather as the 3DS really kicks into gear with the release of Pokemon X and Y. The DS has a strong finish, selling over 1.5 million consoles in the last six weeks of the year -- the 3DS will have to do better than that if it wants to make the final two months of 2013 a really wild ride. And its primary ammunition in that time period is a large unknown, the release of a game we could never have predicted when this thread was started, a game that could be anywhere from a modest success to one of the biggest titles of the year... how will it fare? Find out on the next episode of Puzzle & Dragons Z! right here in about 9 weeks.
*VGChartz seems to have botched the Diamond & Pearl release date. It first appears in the chart for the week ending September 30/October 1, but calls this week 2 for the games. On the Diamond & Pearl page, no data is presented for week 1. A quick check confirms that the release date was September 28.
