to me the 3DS will go the same way as my Wii. I bought one, but i barely buy any games for it and barely use it (My Wii is in a drawer, my 3DS is just laying on the dock). But of course Nintendo doesn't really care since i already bought it, and that looks nice on the charts. Also they cant keep stats on how often and how long you use your device.

@mosespippy said:

@Contrarian: Straight sales figures can be deceptive. Remember is the PS2 era when half a million sales of a game was great. Now, depending on the title, 1 million sales could be a flop. More people are buying video games and consoles/handhelds now. The 3DS may be the fastest selling handheld but the amount that it's outpacing the past hasn't kept pace with how the overall industry is outpacing the past. Essentially it's market hasn't grown as much as the entire industry has, so that means it's losing market share. Five million 3DSs sold in an 18 Billion dollar industry isn't as impressive as 4.8 million GBAs sold in a 12 Billion dollar industry, especially when they needed to drop the price to do it.

I'm sure the 3DS will find it's legs. Remember when everybody was down on the PS3 for 2 or 3 years? The library of quality exclusives gave it enough competitive advantage to retake market share and catch up to the competition. It's still not where the PS2 was and it won't ever be. The 3DS won't be be in the same place that the DS was but it won't be another Gizmondo or NGage.

Word. I have a feeling this same quote will apply to the Vita as well.

Ehhh, that's because it was something resembling a horrific failure until they cut the price and started releasing good games. The difference between now and last year is that I would totally get a 3DS if I had $200 to burn because of Super Mario 3D Land and the promise of some actual good first party stuff in the coming year. Of course, I'm in college and I don't, so I'll just have to console myself with the PSP I borrowed from a friend and the 5 years worth of strategy and RPG games released on it.

The lack of awesome games for one.

I think its doing fine actually. Its selling units and games, and they will make more then their money back on it. So from a money perspective I think its fine.

@m1k3 said:

to me the 3DS will go the same way as my Wii. I bought one, but i barely buy any games for it and barely use it (My Wii is in a drawer, my 3DS is just laying on the dock). But of course Nintendo doesn't really care since i already bought it, and that looks nice on the charts. Also they cant keep stats on how often and how long you use your device.

Actually, they can. The Nintendo Channel on the Wii tracks the play-time you've spent with specific games, as well as the number of individual play sessions, and the 3DS has an activity log that tracks that information as well.

@Commisar123 said:

I think its doing fine actually. Its selling units and games, and they will make more then their money back on it. So from a money perspective I think its fine.

This is the objective view I fail to see, far too often. I would call other consoles a failure if I took a narrow subjective view and the top of my list would be the Xbox easily, then the PSP, followed by the PS3 (of consoles I own). The Dreamcast was a failure due to it dying before the end of the cycle, even if some people loved it. Most people who call something a failure never owned one, followed by those who gave up early because they didn't get the experience they were after. The problem then is the definition of failure and the opposite to what you said is failure.

@Hailinel said:

@m1k3 said:

to me the 3DS will go the same way as my Wii. I bought one, but i barely buy any games for it and barely use it (My Wii is in a drawer, my 3DS is just laying on the dock). But of course Nintendo doesn't really care since i already bought it, and that looks nice on the charts. Also they cant keep stats on how often and how long you use your device.

Actually, they can. The Nintendo Channel on the Wii tracks the play-time you've spent with specific games, as well as the number of individual play sessions, and the 3DS has an activity log that tracks that information as well.

I guess its more about the consoles that aren't connected to the internet

Well since the price drop it's been selling well, but it certainly wasn't before then. And that's concerning. I disagree with some of the posts here that sales figures paint the whole picture of a console's success and that personal experiences shouldn't factor into one's perception of how a system is doing or how it will fare--especially in the first year of its release. If first year sales were the only factor taken in, then the Dreamcast, according to such criteria, would have qualified as a "smash hit." Well it was for a minute, setting all kinds of first-year sales records, the next it was dead and gone.

I think the concern with the 3DS in the gaming community is indeed largely based on personal experiences; gamers are, for the most part, unimpressed by it, and it makes them wonder about its future. I know I do. It's not that it's particularly bad or anything, it's just that it feels like nothing more than a DS with an analog pad, better graphics, and an optional, sort-of cool, but also somewhat irritating visual gimmick--that happens to be the main selling point of the whole system.

So yeah, gamers are concerned. And they should be. Because we've been around long enough to know that sales figures often reveal nothing more than the convolutions of marketing and fad demand. Until a system has proven it has legs over a substantial period of time, it's on the chopping block. Anything goes. Again, the Dreamcast was a runaway success its first year, so was the PC-Engine before it was turned into the TurboGrafx and exported to the States. And the 3DS, to me, doesn't seem to have near the innovations that either of those doomed systems had.

Smash hit? Not yet, no.

The 3DS is currently the best selling piece of hardware in Japan right now, all the other game consoles are trailing, and it's only going to get better, the games have just started pouring in now, wait till you see what's going to happen when Monster Hunter 4 and Super Smash Bros 3D comes out and whatnot.

It is the same view that says Sony can sell 60 million PS3 world wide and is consider an abject failure.

Personally I don't see what there is to cherish about the 3DS. I'm playing more games on my tablet than my old DS where adding 3D nor the "exclusives" are compelling.

All I really want is Dream Drop Distance and OOT. I will probably wait to buy one.

Vita, on the other hand... oh man.

It'll be interesting to see where it goes in six months, but in the meantime, it seems to be a huuuuuuuge bomb.

Because people really want to have handhelds not succeed so those that claimed that the phone and tablet market would be the downfall of dedicated handhelds would be right. Or people just really enjoy disliking Nintendo since the Wii came out. How many people would say that the Wii was the most successful console this generation? No one because people would rather choke to death on their own vomit then say the Wii was a more successful product then the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Nintendo and handhelds just can't win with some people.

I personally like the 3DS, but I think that when people say it's a failure they are probably describing that on a personal level, not a financial one. For a lot of people the 3DS doesn't meet their expectation and they see it as a failure.

Exactly, it all boils down to personal opinion, i personally love my 3DS and use it all the time, there are many people that feel the same way i do, also, this is a Nintendo 3DS forum, if you want to voice your discontent with the system there are other places to do that, because the way it looks, you're just raining on people's parades.

I also think that people are forgetting that this is Nintendo we are talking about here, i'm not saying that they can do no wrong, but this is a company with over 30 years experience in the handheld market, if these guys don't know what they are doing, then nobody does,it was off to a bit of a slow start, but it's starting to gain momentum and i promise everyone that is currently disappointed that it will get much better.

@JasonR86 said:

Because people really want to have handhelds not succeed so those that claimed that the phone and tablet market would be the downfall of dedicated handhelds would be right. Or people just really enjoy disliking Nintendo since the Wii came out. How many people would say that the Wii was the most successful console this generation? No one because people would rather choke to death on their own vomit then say the Wii was a more successful product then the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Nintendo and handhelds just can't win with some people.

I have more Wii games than my 360/PS3 collection combined and I am absolutely happy to call the Wii a massive success on all fronts. It still lacked a few games I would have liked, but I got my money's worth out of it. Buyer's bias will always affect consumer's opinions. Nothing can be done about that.

I think from memory, the 3DS is at about 19 million uits sold, whilst the Vita is about 2.5 million, so from a sales perspective, the 3DS is without a doubt a success. As for the games, despite still being a drought for me, it easily has enough A+ titles to be called a success there as well. With the XL on its way, it will only get better (I will get one, my 3rd 3DS, on release).

I have still only managed to accumulate 10 games so far, with only Resident Evil, Zelda and Mario Kart being the better of them. At least some games are out that I want like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, with Fire Emblem on the way, with seemingly many JRPGs I so dearly want. So the future looks awesome.

Becaus5)3 4ds fucks ass!

Are you going to update this with the sales since (like the last 5 months)? Since I follow a bunch of differnt gaming sites, one in particular whidh focus solely on Nintendo, I have seen quite a few weekly/monthly sales wrap-ups for Japan's games and console market. As far as I can tell, the 3DS has been selling about twice that of any other console on the market in Japan with usually at least 3 of the top ten games being for it. In fact, I seem to remember one fairly recent one which said that the 3DS sold at a rate of 29:1 compared to the Vita (which must be really depressing for Sony). So I would like to see if the bits I saw were flukes (due to a big release or something that week) or if it has consistently been selling well of their and has eclipsed everything else.

I don't know what the sales are around the world, but I can say from purely on my own limited experiences, that it seems to be doing surprisingly ok. In my Sixth Form college with a total about 30 people in it (it is very small - long story) there are at least two who regularly use their 3DS (me and a friend) which is actually sort of crazy for those odds (I personally wouldn't have expected anyone else to own one). And my friend who goes to a much larger college (of about 1200 students) says that he regularlay meets 10 other Miis a day when he brings it in (and with the 3DS limiting encounters to 10 at a time, then probably a lot more) and he usually gets different people every day with a couple hundred unique people Mii's that he has met there. And this is a college which is pretty well known for having things stolen (so many people don't even bring phones in). So that seems, at least locally, as the console seems to be selling pretty well (or the minority that use it actually regularly use it and use its steet pass cuntionality).