I agree, but I expect a pretty sizable turnaround from here for the system. The week Pokemon launches, that gap will just disappear.

I'm not quite as convinced. I think Pokemon fans in general tend to be Nintendo fans too, so the spike is not going to be as pronunced as everything thinks IMO, though the Pokemon hardware bundle might cause a decent spike.

But Pokemon on the DS honestly did not actually cause a hardware bump when it came out at least in North America seemingly. I think Monster Hunter 4 in Japan may cause a bigger bump, because there still are a lot of PSP hold outs I think. MH4 should get them to bite.

Looks like VGC is pretty spot on with everything except for the 3DS, which looks to be at least ~200k overtracked. Pretty good overall for VGC, though. And congrats on the Wii breaking into the 100M club. I hope the PS3 can make it, too.

the ds was doing 500k plus at the time for npd, theres not much up it could go

That's the scary thing about the DS, it didn't even need Pokemon at all.

Everybody ignore Ninja's thread. Dude really hates Nintendo with a passion.

OT:Paper Mario alone for the holidays was bad.

Only positive thing of note here is 3DS software sales. Everything else ranges from disappointing to spectacularly bombtastic.

It's too much freaking Mario all around.

NSMB2, Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, Luigi's Mansion 2, Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing have been their big releases since last August, 4 of the 6 are Mario games ... it's overkill when the 2 previous big titles for the system are also Mario games (Mario 3D Land + Mario Kart 7).

Nintendo needs to relax, take a deep breath, because it seems like they're in a mad panic throwing out all these Mario games. Yes, iPhone/iPad has happened, yes the dream of 10+ more years of monster profits from Wii/Mii/Touch casual gaming may be crumbling right in front of Nintendo. 

They need to gather themselves and come up with a coherent response that isn't just "MariomuuuuMariommmmMariommmMarioLuigiLuigiLuigi".

Iwata needs to settle the company down IMO and find some kind of new creative vision that isn't so reactionary.

It's going to be exciting to see if the Wii U picks up in the holidays.

With their efforts to push purchases on PCs and the like, I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo tried for more of a "service" like the App store/Steam.

What they needed to do during the Wii era was expand enough so that they could constantly make use of their IPs. HD gen and more dev costs and all, I can't believe they didn't see this need to expand faster.