The end of November period brought just about the worst possible news for Nintendo: The latest Pokemon games sold a dazzling 1.5 million units in Japan during launch week.
It’s a massive number in a market where few titles manage to crack the 100,000 unit barrier during their debuts. The hot Pokemon rollout helped once again revive the aging 3DS portable console sales, boosting the weekly unit sales number to 83,000. This is more than seven times higher than weekly sales of Sony’s flagship PS4 console in Japan.
This toxic triumph was precisely what Nintendo did not need. The company requires shock therapy to force its hidebound executives to abandon their preposterous opposition to launching Nintendo’s beloved franchises on iPad. Instead, the ancient Nintendo properties from its ’80s and ’90s halcyon days keep performing well enough to enable the company to keep its head in the sand.
Nintendo is not crashing fast enough. The core device franchise, the 3DS, has now sold nearly 2.4 million units in Japan so far this year, which is substantially below the 4 million units it sold in the same period last year. But the erosion is simply too slow to force the company to change its mind about getting into the mobile app market. The strong Pokemon sales numbers from its home market just gave the reactionary wing of Nintendo’s management a new argument to stay the course and keep hanging onto its slowly sinking game console platforms.
You are so pressed
Pokemon is one of the most successful if not the most successful franchise in the world that not only sells on itself, but sells the console as well. The power, the might! Nintendo knows what they're doing and this article sounds like jealousy banter.
The power, the might! Nintendo knows what they're doing and this article sounds like jealousy banter.
