‘That number would be substantially larger if we added in the digital sales’
Nintendo held a press conference today in San Francisco shortly after its Nintendo Direct this morning where the company discussed some sales figures in regards to the 3DS. Software sales for the 3DS handheld have surpassed 20 million units in America alone, a number that “would be substantially larger if we added in the digital sales” according to Scott Moffitt, Nintendo’s executive vice president of sales and marketing.
Scott then focused on software sales towards Nintendo’s first-party titles. Total sales of first-party games are up 55% compared to the same time period in 2012, with sales in general “climbing at a very healthy rate.” In regards to the eShop, there have been 41 million items downloaded through the 3DS, and that includes everything from games, app, demos, and more. This averages at about 1.9 million downloads a month.
So far in 2013, 11% of sales for the 15 Nintendo-published titles have been through the eShop. Star Fox 64 3D and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D have seen 20% of sales come through the digital platform, while causal titles such as Art Academy, Crosswords, and Brain Age have seen digital sales in the range of 15-25%.
Finally, Scott gave some hard numbers with Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon and Fire Emblem: Awakening. Luigi’s Mansion has sold about 415,000 copies so far, with the bulk of that being through retailers and the like. Fire Emblem, on the other hand, has moved 240,000 copes with one third of those sales (80,000) through the eShop. Over half of digital owners of Fire Emblem have purchased the map packs for the game as well.
Nintendo is late to the digital game, with Scott evening admitting that “digital is where Nintendo doesn’t compete so well” before he presented all of these figures. For a fairly new service, these figures aren’t bad and it’s obvious that Nintendo is making a serious push into the digital area finally.
