Nintendo says its 3DS launch saw the highest day-one sales of any portable system in the company's history, although it declined to reveal specific figures.
The company is not in the habit of revealing day-one figures for its hardware launches, but says it will make first-week figures available on April 14 when NPD Group reports on U.S. retail sales for March.
"Nintendo worked hard to get as much product as possible to retailers on day one to meet demand, and we will continue with these efforts moving forward," the company said in a statement.
The device just launched in the UK on March 25 and in the U.S. on the 27th, supported by a launch lineup of about 30 titles.
Preorders for the device were presumed to be high as well, with online retailer Amazon announcing that the 3DS saw preorders on its site double that of Wii's in both the U.S. and in the UK at the same point prior to its launch.
In the UK, for example, the device saw about 140,000 preorders across all retailers, according to Nintendo, and was forecast by analysts to move about 200,000 units over its first weekend.
The display unity in my local Best Buy was actually mounted to a really strong magnet. You could in fact pick the 3DS up and hold it properly, it just took more force than most people would expect. At first I was afraid an alarm was going to sound. Luckily my rational thought process was correct in assuming that no one in their right mind would make a display for new 3D technology that could only be enjoyed if you were 3 feet tall.
Wait..what? What possible metric could you be using to make that statement? It's fully backward compatible. Turn the 3D slider off and it IS a DS. The only possible area that it lags behind the previous generation hardware is in battery life and there's a strong possibility that there will be future hardware revisions that address this issue (much the same way the GBA and DS had several hardware revisions).
Wait..what? What possible metric could you be using to make that statement? It's fully backward compatible. Turn the 3D slider off and it IS a DS. The only possible area that it lags behind the previous generation hardware is in battery life and there's a strong possibility that there will be future hardware revisions that address this issue (much the same way the GBA and DS had several hardware revisions).
(Hey, Square Enix, you paying attention to this at all? ;)