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The 3DS has sold 1.65m units during its first eight months of availability in the US, according to the NPD, putting it on track to beat the first-year figure set by the original DS.
The first DS notched up 2.37m sales in the year that followed its November 2004 launch, and more than half of those machines were bought during “the holiday time frame” – or “Christmas”, if you don’t speak like a stock exchange.
With Christmas more or less upon us, and both Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 on the horizon, Nintendo is making confident noises about the performance of its handheld.
“With a massive line-up of software on the way and the first-year sales record of Nintendo DS in its sights, Nintendo 3DS enters its first holiday season with a full head of steam,” declared Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales and marketing.
Nintendo also reported that 3DS sales have increased by 23 per cent since last month. In October both the 3DS and the Wii sold 250,000 machines each, while the original DS sold almost 180,000.
Nintendo is understandably keen to draw parallels between the 3DS and its original forebear, which also had a shaky start.
It’ll be interesting to see how the 3DS fares this Christmas. If sales do surpass the first DS then it’s possible that the new machine will find the momentum that has largely eluded it thus far; if it fails to match Nintendo’s projected levels of success, that could be disastrous – especially with Sony’s Vita waiting in the wings.
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