Nintendo CEO and president Satoru Iwata dismissed the notion that the rise of mobile and casual gaming has reduced the market for dedicated handheld gaming devices.
Iwata acknowledged that there are a lot of signs that seem to support that widely held belief, but he asserted that Nintendo’s hardware and software sales in that market segment have been as healthy as they used to be before the current mobile gaming wave.
For instance, 3DS has reached the 7 million unit sales mark last week in Japan. This is almost in pace with how the original DS and DS Lite performed when they launched in the same region.
More interestingly, Iwata flaunted that 3DS software sales are consistently exceeding those of the original DS.
To be honest, Iwata’s claims contradict the trends we witness in our personal lives. We understand that our social circles are not a statistical representation of the world, but it is still easier to believe that Iwata was talking about the Japanese market only.