what did nintendo claim?  all i seem to recall was them stating they were going to have 1.4 millioin by end of march

looked at chartz and as of this weeks ending data march 26th they are at 1,144,700 or so sold.  this mind you does not include the U.S. launch numbers which i assume are easily enough to push past 1.4 million.

yes japan itself is only half, or more than half at like 800k.  but they said worldwide, not just japan in their 1.4 million number

Then why DS got outsold many times in 2006-2007 and it's at 2.5 times the numbers of PSP? One week means nothing, hell, one country means nothing. 3DS is not a fail...it got outsold one week by 200 units in one country and it's a failure? PSP is a win for the first PS console, a lose for the handheld supposed to kill Nintendo; Wii is a win for it's numbers but a failure for the third party's support; PS3 is a win for its library, but what about profits for Sony? 3DS...right now we could say a win for its preorders and fail for its first month's sales? Not really, those mean nothing, trends are important but 3DS comes out in a context so different from the DS/PSP one that comparing it to the previous gen is a bit foolish, especially taking that as a proof for future.

Nope, Iwata said it'd sell 4 million WW first month, 1.5 million of which would be in Japan alone.  According to MediaCreate, total sales as of  last week are 792,954.

Apples and oranges.  To the best of my knowledge, the DS did not sell only half of what Nintendo publicly expected it to in its first month.  In fact, the DS's success was far from guaranteed, to the point where even Nintendo took pains to call it the "third pillar" instead of Nintendo's next handheld; they left themselves an out in case they needed to fall back on the Gameboy.  That is not the case with the 3DS: they have indisputably put all their handheld eggs into the 3DS basket, and yet they've stumbled out of the gate.

Wow, now that's hardcore analysis right there.

Interesting stuff.

Pretty good analysis actually. He had some valid points but we will see in the next few weeks.

I don't think so. There's one thing that Sony's NGP that's going to make handheld gaming utterly awesome.

DUAL ANALOG BITCHES

Nothing is written in stone. If NGP can manage a strong library, then who knows, it can achieve similar numbers, or even greater numbers than 3DS. It's going to come down to which console has better games, not the console power, 3D gimmicks, etc.. Right now, Nintendo is leaving the door open with their weak 3DS library, still with no 2D Mario, Paper Mario, Zelda, Kid Icarus, or Mario Kart.

NGP will probably do about as good as the PSP did which isn't bad.  However, I don't see Nintendo losing the handheld market anytime soon.  I expect about the same results of market share as the DS/PSP with the NGP losing 5-10% more market share to the 3DS.

The point is that we can't just use a company's expectations. PS3 went from failur to sucess? Wii from sucess to failure? Sure, Nintendo expected 1.4 m and it sold 800k, you should take in account about 150-200k by the disaster (looking at how other console fell)...and were they shipped? I think so. And finally, if they expected 800k shipped right now it would be a sucess? No, simply we can't call this judgement 4, I'll repeat. four weeks after launch. Simply thing work different, and as long as I can agree with you about Nintendo's expectations too high, I don't think they are depressed by these sales.