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Soundwave on 10 May 2015
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zorg1000 said:
Soundwave said:

I think the days of 13+ million shipments are kinda winding to a close for them. Mobile is continuing to hurt them every year. 

They never really ever had to try this hard just to manage these types of numbers before. 

They need a game changer to alter this, like finding a new Pokemon type hit. 

The thing with the expansion of mobile is that even 2012 is a long time ago now. Mobile has grown much bigger since then. Back then seeing a TV commercial for a mobile game would've been absurd today it's commonplace. 

The 3DS yearly shipments we're seeing in 2014, 2015, and 2016 I think are more indictive of what the future holds for dedicated Nintendo handhelds. 

 

Based on? I mean didn't mobile gaming grow quite a bit from FY 2012 to FY 2013 to FY 2014? Despite that, sales remained pretty consistent for 3DS in those 3 years. FY 2015 is the first year for 3DS to show a sharp decline, is it solely do to mobile gaming or could it possibly be something else........idk like the system is simply showing a natural sales curve and is beginning to decline due to being past the halfway point in its life?

Nintendo has 6, 1st party games on 3DS that have or will soon pass 10 million, 11 over 3 million, 23 over 1 million with more certainly to come. The only way for Nintendo's handhelds to have a drastic drop from 3DS numbers is if these series all have massive declines which isn't likely.


Actually what I feel happened in those years is mobile cut the legs off 3DS' growth. 

A normal healthy platform should have higher sales in years 2 and 3, and 3DS should have too, Nintendo was throwing everything at it ... all their big IPs, model revisions each year, but they were stuck spinning their wheels at the same level before starting to sink by the 4th year. 

If mobile didn't exist I think the 3DS' trajectory would've been more like this 

13 mill - Year 1

16 mill - Year 2

20+ mill - Year 3

18 mill - Year 4

But mobile is like an anchor on the 3DS, that's now dragging it down to its grave. Nintendo has to sweat like crazy just to maintain a baseline of 13 million in their peak years that would've been considered mediocre to them a few years earlier.