Nintendo 3DS set to beat DS first-year sales

This week its appearing quite possible that regardless of doubts in its success and the whole price slash situation, the Nintendo 3DS may well surpass its DS predecessor’s first year sales. It is important to note first of all that even though the price cut didn’t make everyone on the streets happy, sales did rise significantly. Sales started to soar come August of this year, and now according to the NPD Group the system has passed the 1.65 million units sold mark in the USA putting the device right on track to beat out the original in the same span.

Have a peek at the 50 million DS units sold since launch and note again that this isn’t a race between final totals, (or it isn’t yet,) instead it’s a comparison between the first year’s sales for both the DS and the 3DS, the newer handheld model. This will be quite the feat and a gigantic win for Nintendo as the original DS is still the best-selling game platform in US history. The DS’s first-year sales in the USA were 2.37 million units with 50 percent of those sales happening inside the holiday season. Nintendo America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing Scott Moffitt seemed rather ready to hit the mark again with the 3DS:

“With a massive lineup 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.” – Moffitt

In addition to the apparent jet engine rocketing the 3DS to victory here, Nintendo let known a few more impressive statistics on its recent sales, including 675,000 combined hardware units sold in October. A whole 250,000 of these were the 3DS, while 180,000 of the rest are also in the Nintendo DS family of systems. Of course this is nothing compared to the 7 million hardware units sold this year alongside more than 55 million units of software for those systems.

And don’t forget the Wii, up 8 percent in sales this month compared to last year at this same time, while the original DS has increased 23 percent this month compared to just last month. These two units are heading in to their sixth and eighth holiday seasons and are set to continue their wave of sales event though the 3DS is the new handheld and the Wii is up against the wall with the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360.

Note also that we won’t see the next Wii until at least late inside 2012 while the 3DS is still set to be Nintendo’s great handheld hope. What do you think, is Nintendo in a good place with you, the consumer?

Have a nice refresher on the 3DS while you think of it courtesy of Chris Davies:

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