Nintendo: 3DS has not met expectations

Platform holder Nintendo has admitted that the early performance of the 3DS at retail has fallen some way short of the company’s internal expectations.

"I think it’s fair to say that while Nintendo 3DS had a strong launch day, the results since then have not met our expectations," president Satoru Iwata told investors.

"By which I mean to say that although pre-orders for this system were very strong and initial impressions of this system were very positive, those early indicators stand in conflict with where the system is at today. So, I can’t say there are no issues at present."

Having enjoyed fantastic mass-market success with both the Wii and DS, Iwata admits that the 3DS has not yet been able to replicate that success.

"What we have analysed up to this point is that the initial move by the early adopters has not translated into broader movement by the broader market in the ways that we had expected," he confessed.

"The current situation resulted from the fact that the delay of developing Nintendo 3DS software and launching online services, like Nintendo eShop, 3D video services and so forth, occurred simultaneously, so we could not meet people’s high expectations that they had before its launch, and we did not see momentum after the launch."