One of the saddest things I’ve come to know over my years of work here at Dtoid is that the most vocal of gamers are often also most extreme in their thinking. With some gamers, there is only black and white, without the ability to perceive any shades of grey.
Case in point, when Nintendo and 3rd party developers recently made it clear that the 3DS wasn’t selling up to their standards (leading to that highly controversial price drop), a lot of Dtoiders were quick to either defend console the to the death with plenty of “SHUT UP DA 3DS IS PERFECT” internet screaming, or “HA NINTENDO IS DOOMED THEY 3DS IS THE WORST THING EVER ” rants. Of course, the truth lies somewhere in between. The 3DS isn’t selling badly (at least in Japan), it’s just not a blockbuster hit at the moment. In June, the console was the #1 on the hardware sales charts, just a few thousand units ahead of the PSP, with 120,555 units sold. It was also able to just barely scrape ahead of the PSP in July, with 148,054 units sold. That’s before August’s price drop, but for the end of July, after that price drop was announced to the public. Not too shabby.
If the 3DS is selling that well, despite the current issues with bad press and small library of games, I think we can count on the console sticking around for a while. It may not go on to be the juggernaut that was the original DS, but it’s no PSP Go either.
Full hardware numbers await you below.
Japan – hardware sales totals for June, July [GoNintendo]
June
3DS – 120,560
PSP – 117,745
PS3 – 66,688
Wii – 28,861
DSi LL – 21,102
DSi – 20,244
Xbox 360 – 9,896
PS2 – 5,197
DS Lite – 527
PSP go – 207
July
3DS – 148,054
PSP – 146,308
PS3 – 116,710
Wii – 75,074
DSi LL – 24,992
DSi – 23,159
Xbox 360 – 9,156
PS2 – 7,005
DS Lite – 618
PSP go – 76
