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tak13 on 05 April 2017
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RolStoppable said:
tak13 said:

Yeah... In the west!

Things are different in Japan!

3DS has sold almost 500k so far  and it's yoy up, while its predecessor and percursor of its predecessor were extremly down yoy in the same time frame!

3DS is lucky, switch hardware nature ( which reminds the wii u ) ,  lack of 3DS  bc, software and hardware prices very big difference, 3DS still being supported and switch doesn't have the handheld ips yet!

Hence, the majority of people ( OUTSIDE GAMING FORUMS ) see it more like a wii u successor for the moment... Thus, wii u sales have fell of a cliff even since the switch release date announcement!

Even if Nintendo ceases the software support, 3DS could keeping doing well due to switch being overly expensive compared to 3DS/2DS!

Some people will prefer to spend 5000 yen for Pokemon s or m and 10.000 yen for a 2ds than 7000 yen for a Pokemon switch and 29.000 yen for switch.

And for the average handheld console  gamer, graphical superiority doesn't count, at least it does not count more than the affordability of software and hardware.

A more portable and afforable for the handheld console gamer, switch version should kill it...

I hope you have survey data to support this argument, but I don't think you have. You are merely arranging various pieces to fit the conclusion that Switch isn't perceived as a successor to the 3DS.

There are better explanations for why the 3DS is holding up better than previous handhelds during the transitional period and why Wii U sales are down so much. For the 3DS, it's seeing much more substantial third party support at this point in its life than any of the previous Nintendo handhelds. For the Wii U, production was stopped last year and there have been no new shipments this year.

You focused on that one phrase... ? Why not the explanations of this?

Wii u production was curtailed... Why Nintendo did that? Because of expecting switch to have an adverse effect to wii u sales and not wanting many wii u units on the shelves after switch launch.

( Wii u production has been only halted in Japan in December. ) 

 

As for the data... 3DS has sold 440k between Jan-March and it's yoy up, DS sold 640k in the whole 2011 and it was yoy down by 80%...

Don't say me to wait for the following months for a comparison,  because 3DS sales may face a steep drop , it just needs 12k on average weekly sales for the rest 39 weeks to exceed DS transition year sales by 200k.

As regards the third party support...  DS didn't have third party support in the year of being replaced ? I really ask. At least it had Pokemon black and white 2, a major first party software.

People even believed ( proof* ) Nintendo when it was saying that ds is not a replacement of gba in spite of all the similarities... Imagine with switch and 3DS!

*FAT DS sold only 18m between 2004-nov2006 and gba sales had just  the inevitable normal decline, fat ds didn't have any considerable effect on gba sales at least in the west.