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Teeqoz on 13 September 2015
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Shadow1980 said:

Farsala said:

Worse is 3DS numbers at same point in time. Since Japan and US is about done it could get 5-9m more. europe idk. But 70m seems too hard for it at this point in time.

The 3DS only looks bad because A) the DS was an ungodly monster whose success nobody could reasonably expect to replicate, and B) the GBA's sales were grossly inflated in the U.S. Had the U.S. handheld market in the late 90s and first half of the 00s grew more slowly like it did in Europe and Japan, the GBA might have only sold 60 million lifetime. I think the 3DS will end somewhere in the 70-75 million range (unless the NX ends up being Nintendo's next handheld and launches late next year, which would quickly take the wind out of the 3DS's sales; handhelds usually don't have good legs), which is still very good sales figures. Hell, the 53M or so it's sold so far is damn good for a 4-½ year old system (so far only the PS2, Wii, GBA and DS did better). In fact, the 3DS has already surpassed the GBA in Japan and will likely surpass the PSP within the next 4-5 months and could still potentially sell over 20 million each in the U.S. and Europe, with another few million from other markets.

 


The 3DS is performing very badly for a Nintendo handheld. At the same point in its life, the GBA had shipped 70 million, despite its successor, the DS having already been a year on the market by then. Had the GBA been given as much time as the 3DS, it could've passed the 100 million mark. There's no covering up that. You can't say the GBA sales were "inflated" in the US, just because they were good.