Corner Turned?

Yet, if you take the currency fluctuations out of the equation, Nintendo's fundamental figures are actually looking pretty healthy. This is an inexact science, of course - currency transactions are woven into the financial fabric of a multinational company like Nintendo at a very fundamental level - but it's possible to knock some of the currency-related charges off the balance sheet and get a picture of where the actual business of making things and selling them to people stands. It stands in fairly good stead; in fact, if you were to ignore currency charges, Nintendo would remain on track for a pretty significant profit this financial year. At heart, the company is still doing the basic things it's always done right - selling a lot of profitable hardware units and backing that up with a hell of a lot of profitable software units.

The exception to that, however, is the 3DS. I'm on record - repeatedly - as saying that many commentators have written the 3DS off far too early in its lifecycle. I remain of the opinion that the system is going to have a pretty strong Christmas which will set it up in a solid position as a viable platform for developers and publishers, albeit not a position which is ever going to match that of its older sibling, the DS. I don't think, however, that the sales figures announced this week for the 3DS indicate that the corner has been turned - not yet.

The headline figure is that the 3DS has now sold 6.7 million units worldwide - and the piece of analysis being attached most commonly to this figure is that it means that the 3DS is selling faster than the DS did in the same period after its launch. Yet this take on the figures misses out on a couple of incredibly important factors - the most vital of which is price.

The [3DS] figures aren't dreadful, but they're absolutely not enough to make the console into a viable platform yet.

The 3DS, as everyone knows, has had a massive price cut very early in its lifespan - a price cut which brings it down to the sort of levels that the DS didn't reach until much later down the line. The DS also originally launched with the black-and-grey "Fisher Price" casing which proved hugely unpopular even when the market (and the media) started to come around to the quirky dual-screen format, and the console's real sales explosion didn't start until the launch of the redesigned DS Lite.

If you compare sales of the 3DS against sales of the DS Lite, or against sales of the DS once it reached a comparable price point to the 3DS' slashed price tag, the picture looks a lot less rosy. These are far fairer comparisons to make, even if they're still not entirely comparing apples with apples. Certainly, though, there's little to be gleaned from comparing sales of the well-designed and price-competitive follow-up to the most successful handheld console of all time, to the initial sales of an unproven, experimental, expensive and very risky console - even if it did go on to become the most successful handheld console of all time.

Is the 3DS still in a terrible state, then? No - the figures aren't dreadful, but they're absolutely not enough to make the console into a viable platform yet. The focus for Nintendo must still be on the upcoming quarter, and its ability to make the 3DS into a popular gift this Christmas. In the longer term, the company is going to have to face down the challenge to its business model which is presented by the likes of iOS' App Store, but in the immediate term, Nintendo must pull out all the stops to get 3DS consoles into people's stockings this Christmas. It's too early to celebrate the 3DS' fate being pulled out of the fire - the crucial moment for the embattled system is yet to come.