Nintendo may not have the edge on the next-gen home console race, but they reign supreme once again as the king of the handheld gaming market. Nintendo UK’s head of consumer marketing James Honeywell has announced that the 3DS is now outselling even the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 on a weekly basis:
“Sometimes 3DS, or handheld in general, suffers because people tend to focus on the home console market. But 3DS is really doing the numbers right now.”
The presence of a dominant portable market shouldn’t be too big of a surprise for Nintendo––after all, the DS is still sitting on top as the best-selling video game console of all time with over 150 million sales. But the news is refreshing all the same considering the 3DS’s relatively slow start.
Responsible for the spike in sales––a 24 percent increase at its peak last week––are the system’s latest hit games, including Fire Emblem: Awakening, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, and most recently, Animal Crossing: New Leaf. The latter title in particular has accumulated over 4 million sales so far; for reference, The Last of Us, the current overall top-selling game, has around 2 million copies sold in total.
So what has Nintendo learned from these massive, overwhelming numbers?
“Software sells hardware,” said Honeywell. “You must have heard that from us a lot. And the same can be said for Wii U as we move into peak season. With such a strong line-up of titles that are so critically acclaimed, it is just a perfect storm. It has made it the format of the moment.”
Hopefully the lessons are applicable to the Wii U after all, but if all else fails, it looks like Nintendo will always have the portable market to rely on.
