Only 8.8% of Japanese consumers want Nintendo 3DS

In a recent Japanese consumer poll, only 8 per cent of Japanese consumers expressed a desire to buy the forthcoming Nintendo 3DS handheld gaming console.

We expect to see the new 3DS at E3 this coming June. Although whether or not we will manage to get some hands (and eyes) on time with it at the show remains to be seen.

However, while the UK gets set to bathe in the so-called "summer of 3D" – with Samsung launching its first 3D TV campaign this month – Japan's consumers seem to be shrugging their shoulders nonchalantly in response to the promise of new 3D gaming tech from Nintendo.

No glasses required

Nintendo says that the 3DS will be "enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses" and that it is set to be the successor to the massively-popular DS.

Japanese organisation goo Research polled 1,059 members of its monitor group - 52.9 per cent of who were male, 16.1 per cent teenagers, 17.8 per cent twenty-somethings, 21.5 per cent thirty-somethings, 16.2 percent in their forties and 28.3 percent older than fifty.

While 42.1 per cent of those polled already owned a Nintendo DS, DS Lite, DSi or a DSi XL — a mere 8.8 per cent, "would…like to get the recently-announced Nintendo 3DS, featuring 3D that doesn't require special glasses."

Whether or not this poll turns out to be representative of Japan's famously gaming-obsessed wider population of course remains to be seen.

Kotaku via What Japan Thinks