3DS Will Outsell All Other Consoles in Japan?

Current 3DS sales figures make puppies cry.

In a rather bold prediction, video game publisher Enterbrain is claiming that the 3DS will outsell all other consoles this year in Japan, with a total of over 2.8 million units by the end of this year. Interestingly, they see the total 3DS sales dropping in 2012 to 2.475 million.

If you look closely at these figures compared to current 3DS sales, they would have to sell about 84% more than it's currently selling... every week for the rest of the year. Which seems more than a little optimistic given how lackluster 3DS sales have been so far. I really don't think a software title or too is going to make a huge difference at this point.

Of course, this just represents sales in Japan; worldwide sales would be perhaps triple that amount, maybe as much as 8 million units. To put 8 million units in perspective, that's about a month's worth of iPhone sales... or three week's worth of sales for Android smartphones.  Or  about two month's worth of iPad sales.

Perhaps you can see why I think smartphones and tablets are much more important to the future of gaming than the 3DS. A 3DS game by the end of this year might have 8 million installed units out there to sell to; an iPhone game or an Android game will have well over 100 million installed units to sell to. Heck, even iPads will have around 50 million in place by then.

So far Nintendo's stepped up the TV ads for the 3DS, but that doesn't seem to be moving the needle. I hope they've got some plans to reveal at E3 that will revive the 3DS, but I'm not expecting much.