Nintendo Sells Over 200,000 3DS Games despite eShop Closure

03.08.2023

Nicole Carpenter
is an elderly press reporter focusing on investigatory attributes concerning labor concerns in the game market, along with business and also society of games.

The Nintendo 3DS, the business’s 2011 follower to the Nintendo DS, was stopped in 2020, yet the portable console has actually remained to have a devoted fanbase. While the Wii U and also 3DS eShop closures in late March have actually made it much more difficult to acquire brand-new games for the console, in some way, 3DS followers have actually continued. Over the previous 3 months, Nintendo has actually offered about 210,000 3DS games, according to its quarterly earnings results.

3DS equipment sales continued to be stable at 75.94 million systems because the last profits upgrade, yet software application sales leapt to 391.59 million from 391.38 million. It’s not as big of a rise as sales published in winter months, prior to the eShop closure, where there was a rise of 1.28 million sales, as Axios’ Stephen Totilo pointed out on Twitter. However, it does reveal that the 3DS is not dead, and also stays a preferred console for sure individuals.

Nintendo’s Wii U console, which was launched a year after the 3DS in 2012, had no motion on its recognized numbers. This doesn’t suggest that no games were offered, yet that the number was low sufficient to get to a limit on its quotes.

With the eShop closure, these sales were most likely every one of physical duplicates of games readily available on the console — a lot of 3DS games never ever obtained physical launches, so those, regrettably, stay inaccessible legitimately. You can acquire 3DS games in shops like GameStop, Best Buy, and also Target (along with utilized via various other industries), yet it might be tough to choose older and also uncommon titles currently. Nintendo still sustains the console’s on-line web servers, implying you can still play games with multiplayer; it’s unclear for how long Nintendo will certainly maintain these running. (The business turned off on-line web servers for Wii, DS, and also DSi games in 2014.)

Nintendo debuted the 3DS at E3 2010 prior to launching it in 2011; the portable console updated the DS to consist of glasses-free 3D, which wound up being even more of an uniqueness. The Nintendo 2DS was launched in 2013 as a lower-cost console without the 3D capacities. The New Nintendo 3DS and also 3DS XL came later on years later, prior to Nintendo launched the New Nintendo 2DS XL — a larger variation of the 2015 launch — in 2017, a month adhering to the Nintendo Switch’s launch.

As of March 31, Nintendo’s top-selling 3DS games are Mario Kart 7, Pokémon X and also Pokémon Y, Pokémon Sun and also Pokémon Moon, Pokémon Omega Ruby and also Pokémon Alpha Sapphire, New Super Mario Bros. 2, and also Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Nintendo did not upgrade this listing with this quarter’s economic outcomes.