I decided to check the numbers again I remember the Nintendo announcement of selling 3.6 million units. A quick google search for articles shows tons of articles saying Nintendo sold 3.6 million units. I would like to see a source saying that Nintendo only shipped 3.6-million and did not sell that many units.As far as I can tell the official sales results were 3.6 million.

As for Nintendo not meeting expectations. Falling short 400K is actually a big failure and since launch month sales have continued to dip. I think Nintendo had alot more faith in their die hard user base and early adopters then they could actually count on.

As for Reggie spinning, his statement I was refering too happened right nearby the launch. It was not a spin for damage control. I'd have to take Reggies word for it, because the facts back his story. Reggie stated that Nintendo wasn't advertising much to keep demand from surpassing supply. I fully think that this was Nintendo's strategy and he was being honest.

As I have said before Nintendo was playing with fire. In my opinion they should have launched a 500-million dollar ad campaign and market the shit out of the 3DS. Nintendo thought that demand would be high enough without a huge ad campaign.

I think with product awareness so low and sales waining that Nintendo will launch a massive ad campaign this winter to boost sales and fend off the NGP. Do I honestly think Nintendo is stock piling for this winter? Not purposely I think Nintendo honestly thought the 3DS would sell itself and that word of mouth and early adopters(Hardcore fans) would be enough to keep sales growing.

Nintendo's off to a bad start, they had a bad strategy. The question is what will Nintendo do to fix the situation. They have a great peice of hardware with the right marketing they could have another DS/Wii on their hands. Also Iwata recently talked about getting a third party to market their future devices starting soon.

It will be interesting to see how Nintendo markets the 3DS this winter!

Why are you acting like that is what he mean? "peak" can have several meanings from his context.

Ok, so you're just messing with me right?  You've been on VGChartz for four years.  Surely you understand the difference between shipped and sold.

Here are the numbers Nintendo provided for the US and Europe.

Note only the first two weeks of the Europe numbers fall within the quarter.

We know from Media Create that the 3DS sold 835,933 units in Japan through April 3rd.  Those three together does not come anywhere close to 3.6 million.

Reggie's quote was from an article in the USA Today more than two weeks after the US launch.  By that time Nintendo was below their own expectations in all three markets.  The interviewer asked if they were 'purposefully underpromoting it' and Reggie never addressed that in his answer.

He probably didn't talk about market share but amount of sold units. In previous generations sales started to drop after second or third year, this generation is special in this case. Companies care much more about unit sales than market share. If sales go down, it is always a bad for a company even if market share would increase. Sure, you could sell 1 unit and have 100% market share but it is much better to have sold 10 units with 1% market share. Most companies never even talk about market share, it just isn't that important.

Yea, so far from the rumours we can see what Nintendo is bringing with project cafe is 2-3 year old hardware, so I don't know what he is talking about. Or is this indication that Nintendo are in fact pulling out all the stops and jam packing Cafe with the absolute latest hardware that is available is the market (or was last year) so that they can remain even somewhat competitive when MS and Sony release their next iterations.

But competative to developers that care about specs, not gamers who've shown the take good design over anything else (why Call of Duty tears up the charts, not Crysis).

Usually when Nintendo says sold they mean sold, that's probably what threw him off in this case, as Nintendo's usually proven trustworthy on the whole shipped v. sold thing

Nintendo shipped 3,6M 3DS

sales up to 30th April are

With 3DS going at <150k weekly for now they will barely reach that 3,6 milions at end of June.

Shipment for Q1 FY2011 might be really bad.

And they aim to ship 16 milions of 3DS in FY2011 hmm ?

Software sells hardware. The early launch period didn't really have much software but starting with the summer period, it's an all out barrage of heavy hitting software.

hmm ... yeah, about that.    YES!

http://www.vgchartz.com/hw_annual_summary.php

Take a look for yourself.

In approx the 2nd full year of being out PS2 peaked at ~21m, GBA peaked at ~19m, DS (actually 3rd) 30m, PSP (also 3rd) 14m, and Wii 24m.... and then you have the PS360 which both are peaking later due to the other anomoly where 3rd parties aren't supporting the market leader, but instead are supporting them as a single bloc (along with PC).

EDIT: If you had further history, you could see this same typical 2nd year peak on all prevous consoles.