Nintendo's Wii U might be sluggishly dragging itself along on the path to recovery, but there is no stopping the power of the Nintendo 3DS. The first half of the financial year put not one, not two, not three, but five games over the 1 million sold mark for the company.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf walks away as the best selling game of the last six months with 2.49 million sold worldwide, bringing its total up to an astounding 6.35 million copies. 2 million of those were in Western territories.
Not far behind were Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, and Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, all of which crossed the 1 million sales mark with combined units from Japan and Western market.
The fifth game was a Japanese exclusive title, Tomodachi Collection, which sold all 1.63 million copies in its home country alone.
This list also doesn't consider the freshly released Pokémon X and Y that will likely chart in the millions, too.
Granted, the average AAA hit nowdays needs to sell about 5 million copies just to break even, but Nintendo's rabid fanbase will buy anything it makes. Keeping its portable development cheap and depending on one million sales is not a bad business model for the time being. I'd be more than happy to sell one million copies of five games than to struggle selling five million copies of one game.
Just ask Tomb Raider, Hitman, and all the other AAA "bombs" that didn't quite hit the mark.
