What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear “gaming”? What’s the second thing? Third? Be honest, did the Nintendo 3DS cross your mind for any of these? chances are, it didn’t. As it turns out, Nintendo’s handheld sensation beat the Xbox One and Playstation 4 for the mantle of the best-selling gaming system in the United States last month.
As per early confirmations, the NPD(formerly National Purchase Diary: The NPD Group operates in 20 countries, interviews 12 million consumers a year, and monitors consumer purchase data from over 165,000 stores) group was supposed to release their report for the month today. But Nintendo decided to share some fairly surprising facts ahead of its release.
According to the NPD report, the 3DS has sold a shocking 80%(approx) more units this year than it did during the same period last year(2015). However, no actual specific numbers have been publicized by Nintendo to glean from but that should be compensated for with the release of the official report.
Though, for any non-Nintendo gamers, it may be easy to speculate that Pokemon is the only franchise keeping the 3DS alive, it’s most definitely not the case. Nintendo credits this spectacular turnaround for their 3DS to the release of Monster Hunter Generations (July’s best-selling game on a per-platform basis), “continued momentum” following the 2DS price drop in May, and “widespread positive public reception” for Pokemon Go, which launched in July.
Pokemon game sales have also been on the rise during July. Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire(remastered versions of the good ol’ third gen awesomeness that were Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire) combined sold over 80 percent more copies the previous month than in July 2015 despite being around two years old, while 2013’s Pokemon X and Pokemon Y saw a sales increase of almost 200 percent year after year.
Also worth mentioning that the 2DS officially surpassed sales of 2 million units. Things are definitely looking good for Nintendo this year.
There’ll be more to go on once NPD officially makes its report public.
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