Western developers hate making games for Nintendo systems, and would thus rather make game for mobile devices or PC/Console download than for the 3DS. Don't worry though. The DS became the best handheld in history with token Western support. The thing hurting the 3DS in the West at the moment is the delay between the Japanese and Western release dates for games.

Is it just me, or is most games on the 3DS selling poorly? I had bigger hopes for games like RE: Revelations, but it sold like 600k... What is considered good sales for a portable game?! I have no perspective whatsoever

This.

There's several games out in japan that might have helped make the 3ds's holiday lineup more appealing...jesus just animal crossing alone would've gone a loooong way.

That's actually pretty decent for a portable.  Especially considering how small the install base was when the console launched.

Portable software has historically sold less than home console counterparts (and fewer software per unit sold in general).

And while 600k may be 1/10th what RE6 sold on the home consoles, it was also less than 1/10 the development budget, less than 1/10th the marketing budget on less than 1/10th the install base when it launched.

So... could I make the assumption that portable games that sell more than 500k is doing well? I need some kind of bench mark to go by :p

Think about it this way: most 3DS games cost anywhere from 0.5 to 2 million dollars to make, based on estimates prior to launch. In contrast, the typical Japanese PS360 game costs about $3 million to make, give or take a million. So, the standards of how much a 3DS game needs to sell are about half of that of an equivalent HD release. Thus, Resident Evil: Revelations sold about as well on the 3DS as a 1.2 million seller RE spinoff would have done on the PS3.

So yes, 500k is the handhelds' 1 million.

Look at Asphalt 3D.  It sold 330,000 copies and probably cost about ten dollars to make.

Talk about raking in the dough.

Average major PS360 game costs closer to 30 million $. The difference between handheld and console development is much more drastic. A lot of Japanese games are indeed lower budget niche titles, and they do spend less, but that goes both ways.

I'm sure RE6 had the budget of an AAA western game.

Sure they made profit, all of them