3DS hits 50 "million" sellers at retail!

[KrspaceT]

irstupid said:

RolStoppable said:

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.

That and advertising.

How well are handheld games advertised? Do you see million dollar ads on TV showing off some amazing CG commercial?

Hardly. Look at those 88 PS4 million seller games and look at the 50 million seller games on 3DS. i'm betting one side got more exposure come release date and thus probably had a million on day 1. You can probably recal the excitement on forums around many of those games release dates. Except for like a new POkemon, handheld games don't generate much buzz.

They also are slow burning sellers. They don't sell millions at once unless they are Pokemon, but they continue to sell decently for a while. Look how long Robobot kept popping up in top selling Japanese games. They also can get boosts from Nintendo Selects and bundle sales: Ocarina got a 300,000 sales boost this year after so many years on the market while we all saw Mario Kart 7's surprise return to prominence. 

It also doesn't need to sell as much: 3DS games are not nearly as expensive to make, so you aren't going to find a 3DS game that is a financial blunder for selling millions like Order 1886.