Nintendo on Tuesday announced that it has sold 4.5 million 3DS units in the handset’s first year of U.S. availability. Sales thus far have outpaced Nintendo’s original DS, which sold 2.3 million units in the U.S. during its first 12 months. Since launching last March, the 3DS has reached over 100 titles with over 9 million games sold, accounting for over $1.2 billion in total sales. “Nintendo 3DS closes its first year with a lengthy list of accomplishments but we’re still just scratching the surface,” said Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. “With a massive lineup of first- and third-party games and more on the way, a budding library of entertainment options and an engaged and growing installed base, Nintendo 3DS has an incredibly bright future. We’re just getting started but this platform is built for the long haul.” Read on for Nintendo’s press release.

Nintendo 3DS Sells 4.5 Million Units in Its First Year in the U.S.

Platform Sells Nearly Twice as Many Units as Nintendo DS Sold in its First Year

REDMOND, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The era of glasses-free 3D gaming is turning one this month as Nintendo 3DS prepares to celebrate its first birthday. On March 27, 2011, video games and portable entertainment jumped into a new dimension in the U.S. and that story got richer throughout the year with record-breaking software titles such as Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 and entertainment options such as Netflix, Nintendo Video and the ability to record 3D movies. The platform enters its second year with a massive lineup of games, including the recently launched Resident Evil Revelations from CAPCOM, Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games published by SEGA, TEKKEN 3D Prime Edition from NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc., METAL GEAR SOLID Snake Eater 3D from Konami Digital Entertainment and the upcoming Kid Icarus: Uprising and Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir from Nintendo.

“Nintendo 3DS closes its first year with a lengthy list of accomplishments but we’re still just scratching the surface,” said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. “With a massive lineup of first- and third-party games and more on the way, a budding library of entertainment options and an engaged and growing installed base, Nintendo 3DS has an incredibly bright future. We’re just getting started but this platform is built for the long haul.”

Some of the milestones achieved by Nintendo 3DS in its first year include:

• March 27, 2011: Nintendo 3DS ushers in a new era of gaming with glasses-free 3D. Launch-day sales are the strongest in Nintendo’s history.
• June 2011: The Nintendo eShop launches The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, letting users preview, try and buy new and classic games, download applications and watch 3D movie trailers.
• June 2011: Link makes his first appearance in 3D with , which is still the best-reviewed game for Nintendo 3DS.
• Summer 2011: Nintendo 3DS adds two video services:
  • Netflix unlimited streaming members can instantly watch thousands of TV episodes and movies.
  • Nintendo Video automatically delivers hand-picked 3D content from leading sites and artists.
• October 2011: After only eight months, Nintendo 3DS surpasses first-year sales of Nintendo DS, the best-selling video game system in history.
• Fall 2011: Mario jumps into 3D with two new games, each becoming the fastest-selling titles in their franchises’ history:
  • Nov. 13, 2011: Super Mario 3D Land – 1.75 million copies sold to date
  • Dec. 4, 2011: Mario Kart 7 – 1.45 million copies sold to date
• December 2011: Users can now record up to 10 minutes of 3D video and stop-motion animation.
• December 2011: Nintendo 3DS crosses 4 million units sold, passing the record pace set by the Wii.
• Feb. 22, 2012: Dillon’s Rolling Western launches for the Nintendo eShop, joining hot titles Pushmo and Freakyforms: Your Creations, Alive!
• March 23, 2012: Nintendo 3DS closes its first year with the launch of Kid Icarus: Uprising, the first original entrant in the series in more than 20 years.

Nintendo 3DS is inexorably linked with its predecessor the Nintendo DS, the best-selling gaming system in U.S. history with more than 51 million units sold. A side-by-side comparison shows that Nintendo 3DS had a stronger first year across the board.

				Nintendo DS*				Nintendo 3DS**
Launch date				Nov. 21, 2004				March 27, 2011
Total HW units sold in first 12 months				2.3 million				4.5 million
Total number of SW titles released in first 12 months				58				100+
Total units of software sold in first 12 months				5 million				9 million+
Total $ sales (HW, SW and accessory) in first 12 months				$540 million				$1.2 billion+

*Source: NPD **Source: Nintendo of America ***All Figures are U.S. Only

In 2009, the Nintendo DS generated 70% of all portable gaming revenue in the United States, but in the last two years its share has been devoured by Android and iOS. The two mobile operating systems now account for 58% of all portable gaming revenue in the United States according to Flurry, up from 34% in 2010 and 19% in 2009. Nintendo DS fell from a 70% share in 2009 to a 57% share in 2010 and tanked again this year to an estimated 36% share. Sony’s revenue share slid substantially as well. It fell from an 11% share in 2009, to a 9% share in 2010 to a barely visible 6% share this year. Read on for more.

The data was compiled in a recent blog post by Flurry using its own data and data from The NPD Group, and the figures for 2011 include estimates for November and December of this year. “Combined, iOS and Android game revenue delivered $500 million, $800 million and $1.9 billion over 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively,” the report said. “Recently, no industry has been more impacted by digital distribution than video games. Leading the disruption are iOS and Android devices, whose free and inexpensive games, distributed across a massive installed base of powerful and networked tablet and mobile phone form factors, have already disrupted billions of dollars of game revenue.” So, yes, your impulsive iPhone game purchases are slowly killing Mario.

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Nintendo posted its first quarterly operating loss ever on Thursday in its fiscal first quarter earnings report. The Japanese gaming company recorded a net loss of 25.5 billion Yen ($328 million), which was on a par with the net loss of 25.2 billion Yen ($324 million) the firm reported during the same quarter last year. In addition, it posted a net operating loss of 37.7 billion Yen ($485 million), down from an operating profit of 23.3 billion Yen ($299 million) during the first quarter of 2010. Nintendo also slashed the price of the 3DS to $169.99, down from the portable gaming console’s original $249.99 price point. Nintendo attributed the poor quarter to a lack of Wii and DS sales, as well as a lack of attractive games for the 3DS.

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Gartner Says Spending on Gaming to Exceed $74 Billion in 2011

Gaming Software Spending Dominates but Online Gaming Growing Fastest Over the Next Five Years

Egham, UK, July 5, 2011— 

The gaming ecosystem is undergoing major technology and business model transitions that will last beyond 2015. Gartner, Inc. estimates that worldwide spending on the gaming ecosystem* will exceed $74 billion in 2011, up 10.4 percent from 2010 spending of $67 billion. By 2015, spending will reach $112 billion.

Overall, Gartner estimates that the gaming software component will represent $44.7 billion in 2011, and it will continue to dominate the overall gaming market in the next five years as it absorbs almost two-thirds of consumers’ gaming budgets.

“This large market size means that many consumers embrace gaming as a core piece of their entertainment budget and will continue to play as long as game publishers deliver compelling and fun games,” said Fabrizio Biscotti, research director at Gartner.

In 2011, the gaming software spending will be followed at a distance by gaming hardware and online gaming, reaching $17.8 billion and $11.9 billion, respectively (see Table 1).

Table 1: Total Gaming Market Spending, 2010-2015 (Millions of Dollars)

	2011	2013	2015
Gaming Hardware	17,797	24,621	27,354
Gaming Software	44,730	51,129	56,512
Online Gaming	11,899	21,453	28,298
Total	74,426	97,204	112,163

Source: Gartner (June 2011)

Within the gaming software market, mobile gaming will experience the largest growth opportunity with its share growing from 15 percent in 2010 to 20 percent in 2015.

“As the popularity of smartphones and tablets continues to expand, gaming will remain a key component in the use of these devices. Although they are never used primarily for gaming, mobile games are the most downloaded application category across most application stores,” said Tuong Nguyen, principal research analyst at Gartner. “For this reason, mobile gaming will continue to thrive as more consumers expand their use of new and innovative portable connected devices.”

The segment that will drive the largest revenue will come from video game consoles (hardware and software). In 2010, it generated more than two-thirds of the gaming ecosystem revenue, and Gartner predicts revenue to grow 4 percent in 2011.

Over the next five years, gaming hardware’s market share will remain constant while software spending will lose share to online-gaming spending, the fastest-growing segment. Gartner estimates consumer spending on global online gaming (subscriptions and microtransactions) will show a compound annual growth rate of 27 percent through 2015, with consumer spending on subscription fees slightly declining while spending on virtual goods will grow exponentially.

“We find that subscription fees are giving way to ‘freemium’ models, in which the game is provided for free to gamers but is monetized through advertising (both in-game advertising and display advertising) and in-game microtransactions, such as the sale of value-added services or virtual-good purchases,” said Brian Blau, research director at Gartner. “This trend is prevailing given the rise of social gaming, in which online gaming is connected to social networking sites and social networking platforms.”

“Users have become multichannel-oriented by choice and expect vendors to continue to deliver quality content and experiences by extending their gaming possibilities across multiple platforms,” said Mr. Blau. “If today’s mobile technology does not evolve quickly enough, the gaming industry is set to see the rate of innovation severely decline. Alternatively, it will provide opportunities in technology and content genres that we can’t foresee today.”

Additional information is available in the Gartner report “Market Trends: Gaming Ecosystem, 2011″ at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1724014.

Will Microsoft enter the portable gaming market to compete with Nintendo, Sony, and Apple? According to its chief operating officer, Dennis Durkin, not yet. In an interview with Industry Gamers, Durkin explained that the portable gaming market is too crowded right now and that there’s too much change happening. “I’m not sure I would want to be launching a dedicated portable device right now into that market,” Durkin said. “I think the DS – if you look at the 3DS, certainly versus people’s expectation’s it’s not been as successful as people would have thought. So that’s a very crowded market and a very, very red ocean right now with a lot of change happening. So I’m not sure it’s [a good idea] … You only have a certain number of bets you can make as a company and you have to decide what you want to put your wood behind and I’m just not sure that that’s a place that I would put mine.” Durkin said he sees strength in Microsoft’s Xbox 360 system and is excited about the future of the firm’s future plans for Kinect and Xbox Live. We also imagine Microsoft has its hands full right now with the company’s next-generation Xbox console, which is set to debut at E3 next year.

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Consumer electronics tracker NPD Group on Thursday released its tallies for the U.S. gaming industry, revealing continued console sales growth and rebounding software sales. Last month, sales of video game software dipped to $735.4 million from $875.3 million in March 2010. While sales shrank sequentially, as they do in April in many industries, gaming software jumped 26% from $398.5 million in April 2010 to $503.2 million last month. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was the best-selling console in April, having climbed 60% year-over-year to 297,000 units. Sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 grew 13% to 204,000 units and Nintendo sold 174,000 Wii consoles, a 37% decline compared to April 2010. Mortal Kombat 2011 was the best-selling software title in April, having sold over 1 million units including standard games and special editions. Portal 2, Lego Star Wars III, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters rounded out the top five titles.

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On Monday, Nintendo released a statement confirming that it will reveal the successor to the original Wii during the E3 Expo tradeshow in Los Angeles — which takes place June 7-9, 2011. The new console, currently codenamed “Project Cafe,” may feature a new “Screen Stream” controller option that will provide each individual gamer with their own touchscreen display, although Nintendo did not disclose any of the console’s new features in its statement. The Japanese gaming firm also announced its earnings for the fiscal year ending March, 2011. Net sales of ¥1,014 billion ($12.35 billion) were down 29.3% year-over-year and Nintendo’s net income fell 66.1% to ¥77.62 million ($946,110). Hardware and software sales for the United States, Nintendo’s largest market, also fell year-over-year. Nintendo sold 15.08 million Nintendo Wii units, 3.61 million of its new Nintendo 3DS devices, and 17.52 million of its Nintendo DS portable gaming consoles in the States. By contrast, the firm sold 20.5 million Wii units in the U.S. last year. Globally, the firm sold 171.26 million Wii units, 120.98 million DS devices, and 9.43 million Nintendo 3DS units. Hit the jump for Nintendo’s earnings release, as well as its official statement on E3.

April 25, 2011

To whom it may concern:

Re: Wii’s Successor System

Nintendo Co., Ltd. has decided to launch in 2012 a system to succeed Wii, which the company has sold 86.01 million units on a consolidated shipment basis between its launch in 2006 and the end of March 2011.

We will show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo, which will be held June 7-9, 2011, in Los Angeles.

Sales of this new system have not been included in the financial forecasts announced today for the fiscal term ending March 2012.

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If Amazon U.K.’s pre-orders are any indication of what’s to come, the Nintendo 3DS could be as big of a hit as it was in Japan when it launched in February of 2010. On its Twitter account Thursday, Amazon UK said that the Nintendo DS has become the most pre-ordered console ever. U.K. residents interested in buying the device can purchase it for £187 ($381 USD). The Nintendo 3DS will launch in the United States on March 27th for $249.99. As its name suggests, the 3DS offers a 3D display, and games are backward-compatible with previous Nintendo DS and DSi titles.

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Industry watcher NPD Group says sales of video game software in the U.S. declined by 5% year-over-year in January 2011, totaling $576 million. Console sales were down 8% to $324 million. On the back of continued strong sales of the Microsoft Kinect and PlayStation Move motion-based controllers, sales of video games accessories increased 6% year-over-year to $235 million. The only console to see growth in January was Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which sold 381,000 units — a 14.1% increase year-over-year. NPD ranked January’s software title sales as follows:

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard) – Xbox 360, PS3, Wi, DS, PC
2. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft) – Wii
3. Dead Space 2 (Electronic Arts) – Xbox 360, PS3, PC
4. Little Big Planet 2 (Sony) – PS3
5. Zumba Fitness: Join the Party (Majesco) – Wii, Xbox 360, PS3
6. NBA 2K11 (Take-Two Interactive) – Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, Wii, PS2, PC
7. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft) – Xbox 360, PS3
8. Dance Central (MTV Games) – Xbox 360
9. Michael Jackson The Experience (Ubisoft) – Wii, DS, PSP
10. DC Universe Online: The Next Legend Is You (Sony) – PS3, PC

Overall, the U.S. gaming industry took in $1.14 billion excluding PC sales — a 4% slide versus the same month in 2010.

Today, Nintendo announced that its popular line of DS handheld gaming systems have become “the nation’s best-selling video game system of all time.” With sales of over 47 million units since its release in 2004, the DS passes Sony’s PlayStation 2 to claim the top spot. The company also noted that its Wii console sold more than 7 million units for the third consecutive year in a row, a feat Nintendo brags has “never before been accomplished in the history of video games by a home console.”

“When we look back at 2010, we see consumers time and again turning to the value and enjoyment of our products,” said President of Nintendo America, Reggie Fils-Aime. “When we look ahead to 2011, we see new portable technology and more great Wii games that need to be seen to be believed.”

Nintendo is expected to release its 3DS portable gaming system this March.

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Gaming giant Nintendo recently announced that during Black Friday week, U.S. consumers purchased a combined 1.5 million DS and Wii gaming systems. Holiday shoppers scooped up nearly 900,000 DS units and over 600,000 Wii consoles during the popular shopping debacle period. “U.S. shoppers bought about 9,000 Nintendo hardware systems nonstop for every hour of every day during the week of Black Friday,” said Nintendo of America’s president. Sales of Wii consoles were up slightly while sales of the DS portable gaming system fell slightly from the same period last year. Regardless, the numbers are still very impressive.

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Today at E3, Nintendo delivered upon its promise and announced the 3DS, the only device of its kind to deliver 3D imagery without requiring users to wear dorky special glasses. The portables secret weapon is its 3.5″ 3D display which users can adjust based upon their proximity to the screen for optimal 3D viewing; there will also be an option to disable 3D. Like the 2D DS, the bottom display is a resistive touchscreen and the front-facing camera remains unchanged. Another neat feature is the dual camera system on the backside of the main display which allows users to capture 3D images. There’s also a gyropscope, motion sensor, and Wi-Fi which apparently is able to download content in the background and sniff out a connection and log onto the web without your instructing it to do so. Pricing and a release date were not disclosed.

April saw the video game industry suffer through its worst month in nearly 10 years, as both hardware and software sales tumbled for a combined total of 26%. Consoles saw the biggest decrease with a 36% drop to $398.5 million, while software titles and accessories fell 22% and 9% to $249.3 and $118.4 million respectively. According to NPD research analyst Anita Frazier, some of the decline has to do with Easter falling in early April. If it were to have fallen in the middle of the month as it did last year, Frazier believes the month would have seen an additional $55 million in sales. So what system suffered the most last month? That unfortunate title belongs to the Nintendo Wii which sold 50% less units than it did in March. On the bright side, it did manage to hold on to its title as the top-selling non-portable console with 277,200 units sold. Coming in second was Xbox 360 with 185,400 units sold, followed closely by the PS3 at 180,800. As for portables, sales of the Nintendo DS — fast approaching the Playstation 2 as being the best-selling console in history — were down 37% to 440,800 while the PSP essentially lost its will to exist selling only 65,500 for a drop of 44%. As for the top selling games… well, you’re just going to have to hit up the jump to find out. You wouldn’t want the home page of BGR to start looking cluttered, would you?

1. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction – Xbox 360
2. Pokémon Soul Silver – DS
3. New Super Mario Bros. Wii – Wii
4. Pokemon Heart Gold – DS
5. God of War III – PS3
6. Wii Sports Resort with Wii Motion Plus – Wii
7. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – Xbox 360
8. Wii Fit Plus – Wii
9. Just Dance – Wii
10. Super Street Fighter IV – PS3

[Image: Toothpaste for Dinner]

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Sure it might turn out to be nothing more than an incredibly expensive fad, but whether you like it or not, 3D everything is going to continue to be shoved in your face for the foreseeable future. Case in point: The Nintendo 3DS (temporary name) which today was announced by Nintendo. Images, specs, pricing, a list of launch titles and just about anything else imaginable have been withheld, but we do know the 3DS is headed for a Q1 2011 release and that “games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses” and that the system “will include backwards compatibility so that software for Nintendo DS series, including the ones for Nintendo DSi, can also be enjoyed.” Nintendo has said it will give out further details this June at E3, but man, that’s a lot of time for Nintendo junkies to go sleepless.

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After a strong 2009 holiday showing, the gaming industry once again demonstrated that it is not recession-proof. According to a report released by NPD Group, U.S. retail video game software sales fell to $597.9 million, a 12% year over year decline. Leading the pack in video game sales is the New Super Mario Bros for the Wii and Mass Effect 2 for the Xbox 360 which sold a staggering 572,100 copies in the six days following its late January 26th launch. Hardware sales also took a beating in January with sales reaching a mere $353.7 million, a 21% decrease from  January 2009 and a precipitous drop from the $2.2 billion in sales recorded for December 2009. Nintendo once again claimed the top two hardware spots having sold 465,800 Wii consoles and 422,200 handeld DS units. Microsoft sold 332,800 Xbox 360 consoles in January 2010 and reclaimed the third position over Sony’s Playstation 3 which sold 276,900 units. Bucking the downward trend, sales of accessories rose 2% which is a bit of good news in an otherwise disappointing month.

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