Enterbrain has revealed that the 3DS sold about 384,000 units in Japan during August. This is 2.6x the amount of sales from the previous month of July. This is also the second best-selling month for the 3DS, only losing out to March, which was the first full month it was available.
In line with the price drop of the 3DS, Ubisoft has seen an “eight-fold” increase in the sales of their software for the platform in Europe. This is a very positive sign. As always though, what matters is if the momentum can be maintained through Christmas and beyond.
I’m not too sure we’re going to get any concrete figures about the sales of the 3DS in North America, or any regions outside of Japan until Nintendo wants to spill the beans themselves but, at the very least, Tony Bartel, the President of GameStop has shared the following:
In terms of recent trends, clearly, we’ve had 2 major events recently with the price drop on the 3DS and the recent price drop on the PS3 platform. That has seen a significant increase in the rate of sale of those platforms, as you would expect.
That’s far-gone from anything specific, but let’s just hold to the hope that “significant increase” is somewhere in the ball-park of eight billion 3DS units sold.
The last notch you see in the above graph represents the sales of the 3DS during the week between August 8th and August 14th. Previously we’d heard 207,000 units had been sold during this time, but now we have the more specific figure of 214,821. Keep in mind the price drop only kicked into effect on August 11th, so most of these sales would have happened within about four days.
It sounds like the price drop for the 3DS is having the desired effect in Japan. The handheld has sold about 207,000 units in the week starting on August 8th, making it the second best-selling week in the handheld’s lifespan so far. Plus, the price drop didn’t go into effect in Japan until August 11th, so the vast majority of these sales would have been within a period of four days.
Reggie Fils-Aime, the President of Nintendo of America recently was interviewed about his take on the price drop of the 3DS and you can check out what he had to say after the break.