Nintendo And The Surprising Success Of The 3DS

Megalith

Megalith

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Nintendo’s Executive VP of Sales and Marketing has disclosed that the 3DS is doing very well—in fact, sales are going up, which is interesting in light of the impact that smartphone games have made on the industry.

Nintendo 3DS is here to stay. Let me throw out a number that might surprise you. So far, on a global basis, Nintendo 3DS has sold more hardware than PS4 and Xbox One—combined. Most people find this shocking.
 
Buttons.

Once they've figured out a way to make controllers / buttons a feasable universal thing for smart phones. Nintendo might be in trouble.
 
Sure it only went from 150+ millions of NDS sold last generation to barely any hope of matching 80 millions of PSP sales from previous generation ;)
 
Not really surprised about this. Hand held systems is one thing that Nintendo has always had right.

While it might be slowly getting to that point, cell phones just can't fully replace the gaming experience yet.
 
Hopefully Sony will read this article and start treating the Vita as a handheld system again and not a PS4 peripheral.
 
3DS is one of my favorite systems. The huge number of great titles to play on the thing gives it some great value. I bought a flashcard but only use it for playing older DS games as I can just download 3DS games. IMO Nintendo is still really behind the times with the eshop and are stupid for not allowing people to buy DS games off of it, or just having more virtual console titles period.

And i'm not sure how anyone would find this shocking about the 3DS. Nintendo handhelds have always sold more then any other system. The DS outsold the Wii by 50 million units.
 
Inu said:
Buttons.

Once they've figured out a way to make controllers / buttons a feasable universal thing for smart phones. Nintendo might be in trouble.
Click to expand...

Well, there was the NGage, and I think Sony-Erricson put out something too; it would probably be better to add phone features to a good gaming device, than to add gaming features to a phone. By now, smartphones have conditioned most people not to expect their phone to so a good job being a phone, so Nintendo could probably make something work...
 
Yeah, I've really enjoyed my 3DS. I got it primarily for the Zelda and Pokemon but ended up playing mostly Monster Hunter 3U. Immediately bought the Monster Hunter 4U version of the New 3DS when it came out and put 100+ hours into that as well. Waiting to see what else comes out (probably will pick up Triforce Heroes at some point).

I thought the 3D was kind of gimmicky at first, but admittedly in some games like Zelda: A Link Between Worlds it was extremely well done and added a lot to the game IMO. With the New 3DS it's even better with the head tracking for 3D.

Only real problem with the 3DS right now is the lack of a steady stream of good titles coming out for it. I haven't played it since MH4U and I haven't seen much that looked intriguing since then.
 
SeymourGore said:
Hopefully Sony will read this article and start treating the Vita as a handheld system again and not a PS4 peripheral.
Click to expand...

Sadly won't matter. While the PSP has done better than others in the this field, it has still always been behind whatever the DS version was at the time.

Part of it might simply be people keeping what they have and know. Going from the Gameboy to Gameboy Advanced you could keep playing your old games while playing new ones. Then you went to the DS and could take your GBA games with you, then to the 3DS and take your DS games with you, and so on. Every new version has given you the ability to keep your old library alive and also given you games and characters that you know.

Nintendo has their first party series, Pokémon, Mario, Zelda, Metroid. People will buy their systems to keep going with these series and they are ones that are designed so that kids can play them and at the same time adults can still love them. Xbox has Halo and that is it for the big name first person game that everyone knows. PlayStation has ... uncharted?. If you ask somebody who Mario is they can tell you, if you ask them who Pikachu is they can tell you, ask them who Link is they can tell you. Master Chief they can tell you. Drake might be pushing it (I am thinking that is the guy's name from uncharted).

Nobody else has been able to grab their customer base in the same way as Nintendo in that field. Although still do need people to try as there needs to be somebody helping to continue to push advancements.
 
Touch controls suck for most games. There is a reason so many mobile games are card or color match games.
 
Almost all of my nieces and nephews have one, my 6 year old begs me for one even thou he has a Wii U and PS3.

I believe it.
 
Exavior said:
Sadly won't matter. While the PSP has done better than others in the this field, it has still always been behind whatever the DS version was at the time.

Part of it might simply be people keeping what they have and know. Going from the Gameboy to Gameboy Advanced you could keep playing your old games while playing new ones. Then you went to the DS and could take your GBA games with you, then to the 3DS and take your DS games with you, and so on. Every new version has given you the ability to keep your old library alive and also given you games and characters that you know.

Nintendo has their first party series, Pokémon, Mario, Zelda, Metroid. People will buy their systems to keep going with these series and they are ones that are designed so that kids can play them and at the same time adults can still love them. Xbox has Halo and that is it for the big name first person game that everyone knows. PlayStation has ... uncharted?. If you ask somebody who Mario is they can tell you, if you ask them who Pikachu is they can tell you, ask them who Link is they can tell you. Master Chief they can tell you. Drake might be pushing it (I am thinking that is the guy's name from uncharted).

Nobody else has been able to grab their customer base in the same way as Nintendo in that field. Although still do need people to try as there needs to be somebody helping to continue to push advancements.
Click to expand...

Not only does the 3ds have more "must play" titles; it's also the more robust and portable device. I would never buy my kid a PSP ever. The 3ds is cheaper and offers far more value.
 
Nintendo... comparing hand-helds to consoles in sales? Apples vs. Oranges, much?

How's that Wii U doing for you? Right. Enough said.
 
Handhelds have a much higher profit margin compared to full blown consoles. It's a win for them
 
Mchart said:
Not only does the 3ds have more "must play" titles
Click to expand...

And this is a large part of the reason.
The 3ds really didn't start selling good until Nintendo abandoned the older DS line and started making most new games 3ds only.
There are many people who ended up buying a 3DS just so they can play the new Pokémon games.

There's also the issue of people pirating games. There are a number of different cards and other hacks that allow people to pirate 3ds games, something that wasn't possible when it first came out. I'm sure this has helps sales of the 3ds, although maybe not sales of the games :)
 
Gameboy/DS's have always had heavy pirating issues but Nintendo makes so much money off the hardware itself it isn't a big deal.

I have a flashcart for my 3DS XL but I only use it for DS games since getting legal copies of certain DS games is becoming hard. I try to do the 'right' thing and buy any 3DS games I want. I would have no problem paying for DS games if Nintendo would pull their head out of their ass and offer DS games for the 3DS on the eshop.
 
Inu said:
Buttons.

Once they've figured out a way to make controllers / buttons a feasable universal thing for smart phones. Nintendo might be in trouble.
Click to expand...

I don't really agree, buttons don't make the games. The fact is the DS platform has better games. From a technical perspective the PSP and Vita were both superior in every way to the DS line. But the games were garbage and while they sold quite a few units, it didn't come even close to the DS line. Mobile phones are cute and all, but lets be real. The games are largely just garbage. Most of them aren't even games, they are little time wasters aimed at bored housewives. I don't know a single actual gamer who takes mobile phones as a platform seriously. Unless android or apple can figure out some way to get exclusives on par with nintendo first party games, they aren't a threat. That is an entirely different market.
 
No, you really need buttons. A mobile phone easily runs what the 3DS can, but the 3DS has buttons. Without the buttons you are limited to the crappy touch input, and the games we like to play need buttons. Sure, you can design games from the ground up for only touch input like infinity sword, but this input method is still limited and doesn't allow great enough control.

Play GTA 3 on the PSP and then play it on the iPhone. Sure, the iPhone can run it just fine but the PSP version is far better simply because you have an analog stick and buttons.
 
Mchart said:
Gameboy/DS's have always had heavy pirating issues but Nintendo makes so much money off the hardware itself it isn't a big deal.

I have a flashcart for my 3DS XL but I only use it for DS games since getting legal copies of certain DS games is becoming hard. I try to do the 'right' thing and buy any 3DS games I want. I would have no problem paying for DS games if Nintendo would pull their head out of their ass and offer DS games for the 3DS on the eshop.
Click to expand...

yeah, that never was that hard of a thing. Way back in college knew a guy that had a special GBA cartridge he could load any rom to. And that was about 13 years ago. Then he had a collection a every single GBA game that had been released. Whenever he wanted to play a game he could just copy the rom to the cartridge and load it up.
 
Reading this thread, reminded me that I sold my 3DS XL a while ago, since it was too big, and they didn't offer the n3DS in the US without the XL size. Turns out, they finally came to their senses back in August. Well... I have now bought myself an early Christmas present.
 
Mchart said:
No, you really need buttons. A mobile phone easily runs what the 3DS can, but the 3DS has buttons. Without the buttons you are limited to the crappy touch input, and the games we like to play need buttons. Sure, you can design games from the ground up for only touch input like infinity sword, but this input method is still limited and doesn't allow great enough control.

Play GTA 3 on the PSP and then play it on the iPhone. Sure, the iPhone can run it just fine but the PSP version is far better simply because you have an analog stick and buttons.
Click to expand...

I'm aware they need buttons. My point was that buttons aren't going to help mobile phones. There are zero serious first party developers looking to develop serious games for a platform that fragmented. Sure mobile phones might technically be the bigger market, but this notion that they are going to replace dedicated devices is just silly. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed my fair share of Angry birds. That doesn't make it a game in my book. It was an enjoyable time waster and nothing more. The millions of bored housewives playing candy crush aren't and never will be part of the gamer demographic...Period.
 
Exavior said:
yeah, that never was that hard of a thing. Way back in college knew a guy that had a special GBA cartridge he could load any rom to. And that was about 13 years ago. Then he had a collection a every single GBA game that had been released. Whenever he wanted to play a game he could just copy the rom to the cartridge and load it up.
Click to expand...

GBA was the greatest handheld of all time IMO. It was basically a portable SNES w/ a bit more compute capability and long battery life. With a flashcart there was tons of homebrew you could run. Because the GBA and SNES were so similar you could pretty much play any standard SNES game on it, and it emulated NES with no issue. Also ran most genesis games with no issue, and there was even a decently well running turbografx 16 emulator out there. Couple that with the fact that Nintendo released all the big SNES titles as GBA games anyways and it was an awesome handheld.
 
And I should note that I actually still own a GBA SP and flash2advance cart. Because it's still a more portable system then the DS/3DS are I actually tend to use it more since the GBA library is so huge and I can emulate most of the older systems on it. Anyone looking for a portable device to play old 8-bit/16-bit era games should just pickup a cheap used GBA SP on ebay and find a decent flashcart to use. Looks like you can still pickup new GBA flashcarts that are also microSD enabled which is way better then my flash2advance which just has a set amount of memory that can be written over.
 
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