Some thirteen weeks on from its launch in Japan, and Nintendo's latest handheld console, the 3DS has broken the one million sales barrier - and that's only counting consoles sold in the land of the rising sun. It's an impressive number for the console, although one its counterparts reached a lot sooner. The DS took just four weeks to shift a million units, while the DS Lite, and DSi took eight weeks each. As the first handheld that's an entirely different system, not just a DS with better screens, it does seem a tad surprising that the system's taken so long to hit the one million sales mark - but it still represents a huge number of people for developers to start making games for.
Interestingly, a recent poll in Japan quizzed 1,100 people in order to find out why they were holding off buying the 3DS. The results were interesting, and showed both a mixture of confusion, and apprehension.
- 20. Waiting for my friends to get one
- 19. DS games look magnified and are hard to see
- 18. There's no Famicom (NES) on the Virtual Console
- 17. The buttons look hard to use
- 16. Can't transfer DSi Points
- 15. Waiting for a version with a larger screen
- 14. Saving for Sony's NGP
- 13. Can't play Game Boy games
- 12. There isn't a 3DS color I want
- 11. Can't play Game Boy Advance games
- 10. Worried it'll be heavy to carry
- 9. The battery life seems bad
- 8. Satisfied with the PSP
- 7. Satisfied with cell phone and smart phone games
- 6. Waiting for games I want (like Pokémon, Zelda, etc)
- 5. Skimpy launch titles
- 4. Might get ill from the screen
- 3. Worried about eye strain
- 2. Satisfied with the DS/DSi
- 1. It's pricey/waiting for a price drop
Strangely, the biggest issue with the 3DS - its battery life - only comes in at a pitiful 9, while the rest of the list is made out of a pretty much 50:50 mix between the logical, and the weird - one of the strangest being that the buttons look hard to use, despite the fact they're practically the same (and actually a lot nicer) than the ones used in the DSi. Other answers simply indicated a lack of knowledge about the system - worrying about eye strain, or "getting ill from the screen", for example, shows that a lot of people aren't aware that you can turn the 3D effect off, and play in normal 2D - something Nintendo may want to focus on in their marketing.
That people are waiting for a version with a larger screen is also interesting, and raises an important issue. Nintendo released the DSi XL to make the DS appeal to older players, who were having trouble reading the tiny fonts used in many DS games. It seems those same players are interested in buying Nintendo's newest machine - and many were concerned that they might not be - but Nintendo have, somewhat inexplicably, left them in the dark. The announcement of a 3DS XL would not only lead to a spike in sales, but would also go some way to solving the console's battery life issues, as the current battery fitted to the system is the largest you can physically fit in a machine that size - a bigger machine would mean a bigger battery, and a better battery life.
New games are coming - like Ocarina of Time 3D.
On the plus side, many of the issues raised have now been resolved, or are being resolved by Nintendo, with the ability to play Game Boy games being added, thanks to the machine's Virtual Console, which lets you download old Game Boy games through the Nintendo eShop, while the number of games available is increasing every week, with heavy hitters like Zelda, Animal Crossing, Paper Mario, Super Mario and Starfox all set for a release this year. The price, too, has been plummeting since greedy retailers tried to sell it for £230 when it launched this year, with the console now available for an incredibly reasonable £157 at PC World.With a new colour launching in Japan later this year - Fire Red - and a stonking line up of games, the future looks bright for the 3DS. With a little bit of work explaining the console better to people, the 3DS could well go on to be as much of a success as the DS - and deservedly so. Find out what we thought of the system in our extensive 3DS review.
