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3DS outselling PS3, Xbox 360 week-by-week in UK, according to Nintendo

Stephany Nunneley-Jackson avatar
News by Stephany Nunneley-Jackson Former News Editor
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3DS is outselling PS3 and Xbox 360 week-by-week in the UK, according to Nintendo.

Speaking with MCV, Nintendo UK's head of consumer marketing James Honeywell said the handheld has been trending ahead of Sony and Microsoft's offerings for the last three months, thanks to a number of hit titles such as Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

"Software sells hardware," said Honeywell. "You must have heard that from us a lot. And the same can be said for Wii U as we move into peak season. With such a strong line-up of titles that are so critically acclaimed, it is just a perfect storm. It has made it the format of the moment.

"Sometimes 3DS, or handheld in general, suffers because people tend to focus on the home console market. But 3DS is really doing the numbers right now."

There were eight 3DS titles on the UK individual formats Top 40, and so far this year, it is is the only system to sell more games year-over-year.

Across the pond in the US, 3DS sold nearly 225,000 units for June, according to NPD figures, and finished as the best-selling video game system in the US for the second consecutive month. The firm had three software titles in the top ten.

Titles such as Animal Crossing: New Leaf, continued sales of Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon helped 3DS hardware and software sales increase by more than 40 and 105%, respectively, year-over-year.

For the first six months of 2013 in the US, Nintendo sold nearly 3.6 million combined physical and digital units of first-party Nintendo 3DS software, an increase of more than 85% year-over-year.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf sold more than 505,000 combined physical and digital units in June and over 20% of these sales were through the Nintendo eShop.

Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D sold more than 108,000 combined units in its second month and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon added nearly 115,000 combined units in its fourth month on the market, bringing its lifetime total to more than 750,000 combined units.

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