3DS sales comfortably outpacing Vita in Europe and Japan

Information released as part of Nintendo’s recent investors conference suggest that the 3DS is enjoying a comfortable on-going sales advantage over PlayStation Vita.

Weekly sales of the 3DS in Europe are hovering around the 40,000-50,000 mark and are generally tracking ahead of both the console’s 2011 sales trends and those enjoyed by the DS over the last two years.

However, following its debut earlier this year Vita sales appeared to have settled around the 10,000-20,000 units per week mark across the continent.

Nintendo 3DS had the biggest market share even before the launch of the Nintendo 3DS XL system, but it was far from satisfactory in terms of sales,” Nintendo boss Iwata told investors.

However, after week 30, which corresponds to the launch of the Nintendo 3DS XL system, sales grew considerably, and the sales boost from this launch was greater than that of the markdown in the previous year’s summer. As a result, Nintendo 3DS led the European video game market in August.

We succeeded in maintaining a good sales pace for Nintendo 3DS from September to the first half of October, which is usually the slowest sales season for handheld game systems. Therefore, we feel that we have laid a firm foundation upon which to accelerate sales further as we head into the year-end season.”

The difference in Japan is even more pronounced. 3DS is selling around 75,000 units a week while the Vita is languishing on 10,000 or less.

Nintendo 3DS has been driving the [Japanese] market, and sales progressed favourably throughout the year,” Iwata added. We launched the Nintendo 3DS XL system at the end of July and sold more than 200,000 units in its first week, which corresponds to week 30 in the chart.

This launch led to a bigger sales boost than when we marked down the Nintendo 3DS system in August last year. Although the lowest demand for video games is usually experienced in October, Nintendo 3DS is nevertheless maintaining high sales levels this October.”