Nintendo recently confirmed that the 3DS saw hardware sales of 3.61 million units during its first month of availability, not meeting the company’s original forecast of 4 million. Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata admits that the console has not performed as he would have liked.
“Nintendo 3DS was launched in late March. The sales were high in the initial week, but sales fell below our expectations after the second week,” said Iwata. “Nintendo 3DS has not been selling as expected since the second week, and this is not just in the Japanese market but also in the United States and Europe, where no direct impact from the great earthquake has occurred. Therefore, we recognize that we are in a situation where we need to step up our efforts to further promote the spread of Nintendo 3DS.”
Iwata admitted that the glasses-less 3D was expected to catch on after release, but that didn’t happen, and demo booths haven’t helped. “The value of 3D images without the need for special glasses is hard to be understood through the existing media. However, we have found that people cannot feel it just by trying out a device, rather, some might even misestimate it when experiencing the images in an improper fashion,” said Iwata, noting that users need to adjust the 3D slider to suit their needs. “We need to enhance the contents which can be enjoyed passively by non-active users, like a 3D video distribution service. We will promptly work on this after the currently planned hardware update.”
Iwata also said that users need to be better educated on built in features like StreetPass, SpotPass, Augmented Reality and Mii Maker. “It is now clear that the combination of these new features is not necessarily easy-to-understand by just saying one word to those without experience,” said Iwata. “We have found that not all Nintendo 3DS users enjoy this software. There seems to be more than a few consumers who have Nintendo 3DS hardware but don’t know about this software and possibly haven’t had a chance to get interested in it.”
