Whereas the Nintendo 3DS might have performed sluggishly at retail on the hardware front, on the software front, it seems to have done pretty well for itself, with two games (Nintendogs+Cats and Super Street Fighter IV) breaching the million units sold mark within the first month of the handheld’s launch.
Add another game to that list of million sellers. Predictably, it is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, the excellent 3DS remake of the seminal N64 game. In their quarter earnings statement, wherein they revealed sluggish hardware sales for the DS, 3DS and Wii, slashed their profit forecast earnings by 84%, and announced a massive price cut for the 3DS, they also revealed software sales. Ocarina of Time 3D has sold 1.08 million from its 16th June release date through to the end of June, with 270,000 of those units having been sold in Japan, and the rest coming from the west.
This, of course means that with the 3DS’s 4.3 million lifetime sales, one in every four 3DS owners now has a copy of Ocarina of Time. That is some impressive software penetration there, although it also points to a lack of any worthwhile alternatives for quality software on the system (a situation that Nintendo aims to rectify with its Fall lineup, which includes Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land and Kid Icarus: Uprising).
[Thanks Eurogamer!]
