3DS Outperforms Wii Out the Gate Worldwide

3DS worldwide sales figures from the close of the Western launch week are in, and they’re showing excellent numbers in both the U.S. and Europe, with 672,054 units sold in the Americas and 346,021 to our transatlantic friends. Compare that to the Wii numbers – 529,658 over here and 320,161 in the EU territories – and it looks like the 3DS actually outperformed the Wii on launch. Of course, as many will note, the 3DS actually shipped a surplus of systems, versus the Wii’s inability to meet consumer demand, but still, that’s mighty impressive.

This puts the 3DS’s worldwide sales at somewhere around 2m – not too shabby all things considered! To put this into perspective, the Wii sold about 1.65m – and considering it launched in America, the land of Cash-Giving Game Customers, versus the 3DS launching in Japan, traditionally the smallest of the three big gaming markets, this is pretty impressive, shortages aside.

The 3DS’s performance in Japan is a bit of a mixed bag, of course – upwards of 374k versus about 10k less for the Wii’s launch. Doesn’t seem like too big a difference, but what’s really telling is that the second week of the Wii launch saw a major downturn, with fewer than 100,000 Wii units selling in the second week on the market while the 3DS still managed to sell over 200k in its same week. Even in the week preceding the devastating earthquakes and tsunamis 3DS was still pulling 100k, and in the first week following the disasters it still sold over 60,000! Of course, Wii sales saw a sustaining holiday surge while 3DS has stayed down in the five-digit range, but given the major economic hits the region has taken it’s astounding something with such a high price point is still performing well.

Who knows, though – had the earthquake not hit, Japan’s 3DS sales might have achieved the projected 1.5m target by the end of March, making the 3DS the undisputed champion of Nintendo hardware launches, period. Still, all the people crying doom and gloom surrounding the 3DS’s launch because stock isn’t selling out everywhere can shut it – 3DS is here to stay.

Source: VGChartz