3DS eclipses Wii lifetime sales in Japan
Platform also hosts 12 of this week's top 20
The 3DS has passed the Wii's lifetime sales total in Japan, hitting a career sales to date of 12,752,731 compared to the Wii's 12,698,878. With the 3DS still crushing the domestic handheld market and the Wii U struggling to make any impact, it looks like the 3DS will hold that crown for some time to come.
The figures, from Japanese sales tracking group Media Create, also show that the 3DS is utterly dominating the software chart, accounting for an incredible 60 per cent of the top twenty. Famitsu's own sales figures give 15 of the top thirty selling games to the system.
Still buoyed by the incredible sales figures of Monster Hunter 4, the 3DS sold 159,388 units this week, an incredible portion of the 187,773 units of hardware sold across all platforms. Its closest rival remains the PS3, which managed 10,749 sales.
Media Create Sales: Week 38, 2013 (Sep 16 - Sep 22)
- 01. [3DS] Monster Hunter 4
- 02. [PSV] Yahari Game Demo Ore no Seishun Love-Kome Hamachi Gatteiru
- 03. [PS3] Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Real Reborn
- 04. [3DS] Friend Collection: New Life
- 05. [3DS] Mario & Luigi: Dream Team
- 06. [3DS] Disney Magic Castle: My Happy Life
- 07. [3DS] Nobunaga's Ambition
- 08. [3DS] Animal Crossing: New Leaf
- 09. [3DS] Youkai Watch
- 10. [PSP] La Corda d'Oro 3: Full Voice Special
- 11. [PSP] Brothers Conflict: Brilliant Blue
- 12. [PS3] JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle
- 13. [3DS] Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon
- 14. [PS3] Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist
- 15. [3DS] Mario Kart 7
- 16. [3DS] Romance of the Three Kingdoms
- 17. [PS3] AKB1/149: Love Election
- 18. [3DS] New Super Mario Bros. 2
- 19. [PS3] Phantom Breaker: Extra
- 20. [3DS] Mushi Bugyou
No one I know who owns a 3DS has one to REPLACE their home console at all - it just has more games more often and some real winners. Shorter dev time does this, as do studios who've mastered what they do on the hardware and can knock it out of the park on a regular basis.
Remember, you can't buy Nintendo hardware without Nintendo software and that 3DS has more (and yep, better) games than some of the competition (which shouldn't include the Wii U, but oh well...). That said, imagine if the Wii U had a similar lineup to the 3DS? That would be pretty outstanding for everyone with even the mildest interest in the hardware...
It's taken Nintendo over two years to get to the point where 3DS has that strong a line up, and it's particularly only this year in the West where the over-all software library has reached a strong enough point to lift baseline sales. With titles like Pokemon and Zelda launching globally, and the 2DS lowering the entry barrier, the system will only go from strength to strength.
Of course, it would be brilliant if Wii U had as strong a line up as 3DS. Nintendo must aspire to provide the best possible software for Wii U to expand the install base. It wasn't easy to do that with 3DS, and it will be even more difficult with Wii U. Third party support is thin on the ground, and first party software is more expensive, manpower intensive and time consuming to develop on Wii U than it is on 3DS. For all the money and intellectual property Nintendo have, in terms of development manpower, they are not a huge company, and will struggle to keep pace with the demands of development without more rapid expansion. Wii U needs sales, sure, but that needs to balanced against continuing the success of 3DS. After all, it's Nintendo successful handheld division that keeps them going when their home consoles are struggling. If Nintendo sacrifice that for the far less certain possibility of turning around Wii U, it could be immensely damaging in the long-term.