3DS hits 50 "million" sellers at retail!

[Mnementh]

RolStoppable said:

Teeqoz said:
I do wonder though, what is it that causes handhelds to consistently have much lower attach rates than home consoles? I have two hypotheses. The first one is that the average age of handheld players/owners might be lower than the average age of home console players/owners, and less disposable income leads to fewer games being bought (although that is partially made up for by more free time, thus more time disposable for playing games). My other hypothesis is that people are more likely to buy multiple versions of a handheld than a home console, largely because it's cheaper, so it's easier to justify the purchase. I don't really have evidence for this, it's just anecdotal but all the people I know that owns handhelds (or used to own handhelds) owned several of the same handheld (I have a friend that owned 4 different DSs, even though none of them broke).

My hypothesis is that handheld and home console ownership often overlap (pick any combination of manufacturers) and most of the gaming time is spent at home, making it an uphill battle for handhelds to compete. This is further strengthened by most publishers having a preference for home consoles, thus putting their best efforts there. In other words, if each generation you broke down how many worthwhile games were published for handhelds and how many for home consoles (all manufacturers combined), home consoles would comfortably win every time. The gap should be so big and obvious that we do not have to make actual lists.

The relationship between home consoles and handhelds has been changing in Japan, so the differences in tie ratio should be much less pronounced than they are in America and Europe. It's been a while since I've looked at the numbers.

I cannot vouch for this theory, I own more DS games than Wii games and way more 3DS-games than WiiU-games. Although I mostly prefer japanese games, so this would match you saying it's different in Japan.