Nintendo seems to be gearing up for a critical holiday season, and it seems to have some positive momentum (finally) on its side. Ahead of the NPD report that was released yesterday, Nintendo revealed that the Nintendo 3DS was the bestselling system in the United States for the fifth consecutive month in September; it is to be noted that September saw no major release for the 3DS, so it is that much more impressive. The numbers probably come from the residual effect of a smattering of excellent software released for the 3DS all throughout the year.
On the console side of things, Nintendo finally had some good news to report, as following the Wii U price drop in September, sales surged by a staggering 300%; in absolute numbers, this probably doesn’t translate to much (estimates peg it at ~93,000 units sold), but that still establishes that there is in fact a market for the platform.
It was a good month for Nintendo all around, as Pikmin 3 and Mario and Luigi: Dream Team charted in the software charts too, which is difficult for exclusive software at the best of times.
Away from the Nintendo side, the PS3 finally managed to outsell the Xbox 360 in the US, which probably bodes well for Sony ahead of the PS4 launch. We don’t have exact numbers for either system here, but no doubt Microsoft is panicking that its hold on its strongest territory might be slipping.
Nintendo should be able to carry this momentum forward to next month as well; with the release of Pokemon X and Y (which has already sold an amazing 4 million copies in 48 hours), and the budget priced Nintendo 2DS, we’ll probably see them topping the charts on both the handheld and the software front.
