The Nintendo 3DS was the top video game platform in the month of May and it continued its reign at the top for the second consecutive month thanks in large part to Animal Crossing: New Leaf.  Animal Crossing: New Leaf sold a whopping 505,000 digital and physical copies combined in the month of June.  Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon also performed very well.  With the upcoming launch of Pokemon X/Y, I think the 3DS is going to be at the top for a long time.

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Strong Animal Crossing: New Leaf Launch Helps Nintendo 3DS Repeat as Best-Selling Video Game Platform

Nintendo 3DS sold nearly 225,000 units of hardware in June and finished as the best-selling video game system in the U.S. for the second consecutive month. A strong launch for Animal Crossing: New Leaf and the continued strength of Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon helped sales of Nintendo 3DS hardware and software increase by more than 40 percent and nearly 105 percent, respectively, over the same time last year.

Highlights for the month include:

  • Through the first six months of 2013, Nintendo has sold nearly 3.6 million combined physical and digital units of first-party Nintendo 3DS software, an increase of more than 85 percent over the same time frame last year.
  • Animal Crossing: New Leaf sold more than 505,000 combined physical and digital units in June. More than 20 percent of these sales were through the Nintendo eShop, the second-highest ratio behind only Fire Emblem Awakening. Nintendo’s internal trackers show that sales of the game continue to be strong in July as well, indicating that Animal Crossing: New Leaf is poised to be one of the biggest games of the summer.
  • 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.
  • Nintendo had three of the top five best-selling software SKUs for the month.

Nintendo 3DS will build on its momentum with the successive launches of Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (Aug. 11), Pokémon X and Pokémon Y (Oct. 12),Mario Party for Nintendo 3DS (name not final; November) and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (November).

Starting in August and continuing through the end of the year, Wii U will launch a series of great games, including Pikmin 3 (Aug. 4), The Wonderful 101(Sept. 15), The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD (October), Wii Party U (October), Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (November), Super Mario 3D World (December) and Wii Fit U (December).

*Data regarding physical sales of games in June are from the NPD Group. Data regarding digital downloads of games and combined physical/digital life-to-date numbers are from Nintendo’s internal sales figures. All numbers are specific to the United States only.

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