Nintendo's 3DS plans remain unchanged as unit and software sales slow

Nintendo’s latest financial report shares recent sales figures for the 3DS and, while the system is indeed still selling, its momentum continues to slow.

During the 3 month period ending June 30, Nintendo says it sold somewhere around 200,000 Nintendo 3DS systems, down 44.9 percent from what it sold during the same period last year.

Software sales have also slowed by about half, coming in at 1.48 million units for the quarter, a 49.7 percent decrease year-over-year. To date, the 3DS has sold 75.28 million hardware units and 379.6 million software units.

It’s not unexpected that 3DS sales are slowing; the family of handheld systems first showed up a little over 9 years ago and Nintendo’s partially portable Switch console has somewhat crept into the system’s handheld video game console niche. Nintendo itself just recently announced a smaller and entirely portable Switch system, but the company has long maintained that the 3DS and Switch aim to serve different markets.

So, even as 3DS sales slow by nearly 45 percent from one year to the next, Nintendo is sticking to its guns in this latest financial report as well, restating that the handheld system is targeted at first-time game system owners, thanks in no small part to the system’s sizable game library.

“For Nintendo 3DS, we will continue to leverage the platform’s rich software library to appeal to consumers purchasing game hardware for the first time, while continuing to drive sales of evergreen titles that leverage its hardware install base,” reads the report.