Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed that he is not pleased with 3DS’ momentum in the west, namely US and EU. He believes that the momentum is not as much as they would have wanted, but the situation in Japan is completely different, and the handheld has beaten their internal estimates.
“What we should say first is that, while the Nintendo 3DS has a certain degree of sales momentum in Japan, the momentum in the US and Europe is currently weak. On the other hand, sales momentum in the US and Europe is not so good,” he said at a shareholder meeting.
“Considering that the US and European markets are larger than the Japanese market in terms of the size of the population, sales in the US and Europe are supposed to be larger.
“At the year end of 2011 the sales momentum in those markets increased in the same way as in Japan; however, the sales pace went down after the beginning of 2012. As a result, the sales proportion of the Nintendo 3DS is now about 20% of the total video game sales in those markets. Thus, solid sales momentum has not been created.”
That’s a pretty honest revelation by Iwata, and one of the reasons why I respect him so much.