By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo`s business year ended. How did 3DS fare?

DélioPT on 09 April 2011

Hardware wise, i think that Japan is a bit low, even with the earthquake, as other platforms are selling like they normally did before that.

It`s the software numbers that are really hard to understand. 15 million is a lot of shipped games for a period of one month and a couple of days.

Hardware outselling software is funny but only proves that some people either didn`t care for the launch games or were just happy with the built-in software. If the last one is true, Nintendo made the right move in including them with 3DS.



Around the Network
HappySqurriel on 09 April 2011
Buzzi said:
gumby_trucker said:

I think the hardware numbers are good, especially of you consider the effect the earthquake had on sales in Japan in particular.

The real problem from your data is the software. I can think of a few interpretations for this. The easiest one being there wasn't a killer app at launch, other than what came pre-installed on the system already. This was supposed to be Nintendogs from what I understand, but it's quite possible the title just hasn't come off as unique or different enough from the original to warrant a purchase. This may also be true for a lot of other of the 3DS' launch games such as Pilot Wings, SSFIV, Layton, Ridge Racer etc. I won't bother mentioning the games that were simply of poor quality as their sales would have been insignificant anyway...

Which leaves Steal Diver, which looks cool but definitely not a system seller.

The second reason is that DS games are still selling phenomenally well, especially outside Japan. Many customers have better products to spend their money on.

The third reason is technically the same as the second, but deserves a category of it's own: Pokemon, obviously.

even with all those, I can't understand the size of the gap between expected sales and actual sales...

Are these really Nintendo's projected numbers for 3DS software alone? Even if the 3DS sold all 4 million units by now, the attach rate needed to sell 15 mil. units of software is nearly 4:1 which is absurd for the launch of a new console...

The 4:1 ratio is another reason why this numbers should be shipped, 2.5m hardware in 6 days and 15m in just more than a month was impossible to be intended sold to customers.


Yeah, probably shipped numbers ...

While expecting people to buy 4 games per-system would be insane, expecting retailers to fully stock their shelves with games that will be sold over the next several weeks (probably) reduces that to a much more reasonable attach rate.



ryuatsui on 09 April 2011

Nintendo said they expect to ship 4 million 3DS and 15 million 3DS games up to 31 March, not sold.



luiaots on 09 April 2011

My questions is, is it reasonble for a retailer to order 4 times as many software than hardware for a launch?



I am a nintendo fan, not a nintendo fanboy

DélioPT on 09 April 2011

Since 3DS`s launch is more core oriented, they expect to sell more games than they did with DS.



Around the Network
Albion on 09 April 2011
DélioPT said:

Since 3DS`s launch is more core oriented, they expect to sell more games than they did with DS.

How many times are company's going to get slap back the head  befor they understand Hard Core is not the Core

Like iv been saying this thing is great on paper, but its step in the rong direction if making mad money is what they really want to do.

Lifetime 80-100 million Unit sold.  Nintendo will still be market leader. Theres no way they sell 150 million though.



DélioPT on 09 April 2011

Well, core gamers do tend to buy more games than casual gamers. Nintendo is probably thinking that their aproach on core gamers will make the latter buy more games. Maybe that`s why they wanted to ship 15M games to stores.



gumby_trucker on 09 April 2011

I still think there's a mistake here.... Nintendo aren't new to this , they can't be so grossly off the mark in terms of software sales... Maybe if you count AR and Face Raiders as two unique games which would make for an automatic 8 mil shipped on 4 mil 3DS, then you are left with 7 mil units of software shipped, which sounds like a reasonable attach rate for a hardware launch.

Given Vgchartz' numbers there are already 6 mil units of software sold, and possibly more if the 3DS and its games are under-tracked, in which case they may have shipped twice that amount making the total a lot closer to estimates.



Until you've played it, every game is a system seller!

the original trolls

Wii FC: 4810 9420 3131 7558
MHTri: name=BOo BoO/ID=BZBLEX/region=US

mini-games on consoles, cinematic games on handhelds, what's next? GameBoy IMAX?

Official Member of the Pikmin Fan Club

gumby_trucker on 09 April 2011
RolStoppable said:

It's more like the people here don't realize how many millions of software units are on store shelves at any given time. While for the hardware the range usually is between one and two million units, software should be multiple times more than that as anyone who goes into stores every now and then should know. In a big store you see dozens of consoles stacked up along with hundreds of games, unless there are any kind of shortages.

Since the profit margins for retailers are higher on software, it shouldn't be hard to believe that they want to keep their shelves filled at any given time. Ten million games sitting on store shelves worldwide should be pretty normal for any reasonably popular video game system.

EDIT: And the AR games and Face Raiders most certainly don't count, because they aren't actual software units, but preinstalled on the hardware.

The source in the link clearly states that bundled software is included in Nintendo's forecast, although it is possible they mean something other than pre-installed games by that... (I have no idea what it could be if that is the case..)

I definitely agree with you regarding the profit margins on games though.



Until you've played it, every game is a system seller!

the original trolls

Wii FC: 4810 9420 3131 7558
MHTri: name=BOo BoO/ID=BZBLEX/region=US

mini-games on consoles, cinematic games on handhelds, what's next? GameBoy IMAX?

Official Member of the Pikmin Fan Club

Kyuubi Ricky SSJ2 on 09 April 2011

Street Fighter seems to be doing well: http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/25998