By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Soundwave on 10 June 2015
Edit Thread
mountaindewslave said:
Soundwave said:


GBA sales actually peaked in 2003 I believe with the release of the GBA SP. The SP was a huge seller (figures because you could actually play the damn thing without having to be directly under a light source at all times). 

If you're saying sales slowed after that, well no shit, that tends to happen when you have your legs cut off from under you with a successor released. 

If Nintendo released "4DS" 3 years into the 3DS life cycle it would wither up and die at 50 million LTD. 


I hear what you are saying, but if supposedly the GBA was capable of much greater sales ( and you're talking tens of millions) it's hard to believe Nintendo wouldn't have held the release of the DS for a bit

based on DS sales we can obviously tell that at that time the handheld market was much larger than now, most likely due to less usage of advanced mobile phones and things of that nature

GBA sales versus DS sales definitely indicate that Nintendo was not properly getting involved with the market. you can't spin it both ways, Nintendo released the DS and it sold huge-  despite being released not THAT long after the GBA. GBA sold well but arguably it was not really saturating the market that well based on the DS's performance starting in 2004 and onward

what I'm pointing out is that the GBA sold well due to the time and place, that  it was certainly easier to sell handhelds in the early to mid 2000s than it is today. the 3DS may not be matching the GBA in terms of sales pace, but it is doing extremely well when you consider price point and the competition that handhelds now face from mobile gaming


Nintendo was worried that Sony was going to walk into the handheld market and take over the same way they did with the console market. So they had no choice but to release a repsonse (the DS). Otherwise they would have just let the GBA go, it was selling great. 

3DS has not been doing great the last few years. 2DS sales were dissapointing, the Pokemon bump was dissapointing, and last year was Nintendo's lowest handheld shipment in 17 years. Until this year, which will be their lowest handheld shipment in 18 years. You have to go back to before Pokemon became a hit to find handheld sales this low from Nintendo on a yearly basis. 

So while it's nice that the 3DS had a decent start to this cycle, the indicators as to where it's going now are not so rosy. It's clearly slipping against mobiles which doesn't bode well for the future. This is a situation that's getting worse year to year, not better. 

All of which wouldn't be so bad if Nintendo had even a half way decent selling console like they did in the mid-1990s where they had the SNES and N64 to weather a period where Game Boy sales went into the toilet, but the Wii U is not holding up its end of the bargain in that regard either and is going to be their worst selling console by about a mile.