During Nintendo's recent financial presentation, during which we learned about pre-download functions coming to Wii U and 3DS as well as more details on the QOL Sensor, company CEO Satoru Iwata also celebrated the wonderful sales performance of the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL handheld revisions that just released in Japan. In the first week on shelves, both versions combined sold 234,000 units, making this the best first-week performance of remodeled handhelds in Nintendo history. So if the machines are doing so spectacularly, why has Nintendo decided not to release them in the West this year?
Iwata explained his logic:
The overseas markets are different from the Japanese market in both their stages of popularization of Nintendo 3DS and their market characteristics. The stage of popularization of Nintendo 3DS means the degree to which we have turned potential purchasing power into actual sales of the product in a market. In Japan, the total number of sales of Nintendo 3DS has reached nearly 17 million in the three and a half years since its launch. It is almost the same as the lifetime sales of GameBoy Advance released in 2001, which implies that it is reasonable that the sales of Nintendo 3DS have been temporarily slow moving in the Japanese market. This is one of the reasons we needed to bring New Nintendo 3DS/3DS XL to the market this year. To the contrary, neither of the cumulative sales figures of Nintendo 3DS in the U.S. nor Europe is more than that in Japan despite, based on the historical performance, bigger sales potential. In short, Nintendo 3DS is still at an earlier stage of popularization in these two markets.
In other words, the region where 3DS is doing best gets the new toys, while the regions where 3DS isn't doing as well are being told to wait. This doesn't make much sense to me. If 3DS sales in North America and Europe are slow, wouldn't new hardware help reinvigorate those markets? Wasn't that the whole reason why the 2DS was released in those territories and not in Japan? This also doesn't explain why Australia and New Zealand get the New 3DS on November 21, ahead of everywhere else.
Another reason Iwata gave was that software in the West enjoys sales over a longer period of time compared to in the West. So, we aren't getting the new hardware because we are buying too many games? That doesn't seem right, does it? Whatever the reasons, the sting of neglect burns deep.
