Nintendo's newest handheld will turn one year old on February 26, the anniversary of its Japanese debut, and can celebrate its first anniversary having passed 5 million domestic sales.
All things considered, 2011 was a pretty solid year for the 3DS. Despite an incredibly slow adoption rate at launch and the resultant corporate turmoil, buyers on the fence were eventually persuaded by a massive price drop and 3D remakes of yesteryear's classics. By the end of 2011, Nintendo had sold "more than 4 million" of its stereoscopic wunderkind to US consumers, as well as 1 million units each of Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7.
Late last week, Nintendo revealed it was working on an extra slide pad for the Nintendo 3DS. Today, the company dated and priced said extra slide pad.
The slide pad will cost ¥1,500 (US$19), and it will be released on December 10. No word on its US release.
The peripheral is powered by a single AA battery.
Nikkei reported sales of 207,000 units for 3DS. Enterbrain (via Famitsu.com) followed with sales figures of 214,821 units.
Like Nikkei's figure, Enterbrain's covers the week of August 8 - August 14. The system's price was cut 10,000 yen down to 15,000 yen on the 11th.
The 214,821 sales figure is the system's 2nd highest weekly total. The first is 371,326 units sold the week of launch in late February.
@TheSmilkman, Based on the Wall Street Journal's depiction, management basically described the 3DS as a flop and apologized for its performance. Unit sales completely plunged to almost nothing after its debut.
This is bang on. Not to mention the biggest market's pocket book for portable devices just shrank 20-50% in the last two years due to inflation and employment.
I think we are seeing a significant impact to the portable games market thanks to mobile phone devices and tables becoming more game oriented. I Nintendo will never again see the heyday of DS type sales. Also I think the 3DS is too simlilar to the DS for consumers to justify the jump at this point.
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