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3DS was 2013's top seller, but Nintendo still cuts back projections

Down to 13.5 million

3DS was 2013's top seller, but Nintendo still cuts back projections

Was 2013 the year of the 3DS, or the year the handheld fell by the wayside?

Numbers released during the last week would suggest that, to a certain extent, both apply.

Figures sourced from NPD confirmed that Nintendo's 3DS was the best selling console across the US in 2013, shifting 11.5 million across the course of the year.

However, this hasn't stopped Nintendo from reducing its handheld sales expectations for the ongoing fiscal year.

Realism

Overshadowed by an almost complete collapse in Wii U sales over Christmas, Nintendo has quietly cut back its 3DS shipment forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2014 from 18 million to 13.5 million.

This reduction has had a knock-on effect on games, too - an original forecast of 80 million games shipped has been reduced to 66 million.

This is the second year in a row Nintendo has revised its annual 3DS shipment projections downwards.

"Outside Japan, while its market share increased as we continued to release compelling titles throughout the year, Nintendo 3DS did not reach our sales targets in the overseas markets," detailed Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.

"We were ultimately unable to achieve our goal of providing a massive sales boost to Nintendo 3DS in the year-end sales season.

"In Europe, while the individual markets showed different results, France was the only market in which we experienced relatively strong sales, and we failed to attain our initial sales levels by a large margin in other countries."


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Features Editor

Matt is really bad at playing games, but hopefully a little better at writing about them. He's Features Editor for PocketGamer.biz, and has also written for lesser publications such as IGN, VICE, and Paste Magazine.