Nintendo blames lack of hit games for faltering 3DS sales

Nintendo's financial results have shown that its 3DS handheld console sold just 710,000 in the last quarter globally, with the company pointing to a lack of hit games as the reason behind less than stellar sales.

With the soon-to-be-replaced Wii selling more than double that total, and older DS versions (including DSi and DSi XL) sold 1.44 million, the sales are certainly below what Nintendo hoped for.

Nintendo's quarterly profits showed a net sale decrease of 50.2 per cent on the same period last year, dropping to 94 billion yen (c£739m) for the three months from April to June this year.

Few other hit titles

"During the three months ended June 2011, for the Nintendo 3DS The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was launched and favourably received, but Nintendo had few other hit titles," said Nintendo's pdf release.

"As a result, the worldwide sales of Nintendo 3DS hardware and Nintendo 3DS software were 0.71 million units and 4.53 million units respectively."

Nintendo points to the amount of money invested in marketing the 3DS (which now looks less than brilliantly spent) and research and design on the forthcoming Wii U as major factors in the poor results.

The forecast for total sales of the 3DS between April of this year and March of next is 12,000,000. To date the handheld has sold 4.3 million units.

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