Off to a solid start?

3DS XL arrived on Saturday in Europe and Japan, with some retailers in the UK having permission to hand out pre-orders the day before. As we reported yesterday, the latest UK charts showed a bump in some software sales, even if the new titles launched alongside the system failed to break into the top 40. It'll be next week's results that give a stronger indication of how the new handheld is performing, but some other figures and analysis have come to light that suggest a reasonable if unspectacular start for the XL.

As part of a wider feature around XL and the prospects of 3DS overall, gamesindustry.biz has more sales details from its retail sources. Jonny Minkley has written the following.

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Chart-Track doesn't give out hardware numbers, but I understand XL shifted a figure a little shy of five figures, outselling the original 3DS (whose total is based on seven days' data) by a factor of just over 2:1. At the same time, old 3DS was down slightly on its previous week.

As for software, sales were up 11 per cent for the week overall (following a 31 percent leap the previous week, probably inspired by the launch of Kingdom Hearts 3D). For specific titles, Mario Kart 7 jumped by 45 per cent, up to 13th in the all-formats chart, with Super Mario 3D Land up 37 per cent to 20th and Mario & Sonic's London Olympics caper predictably up 25 per cent into the bronze medal position.

For further context, it should be considered that only one full day of trading is applicable for the XL model, while 3DS had the full seven days. To outsell the original model by over double, and to prompt significant software bumps on the most prominent titles, shows that the system did have a modest impact: all against the backdrop of the first full Olympic weekend, as well.

It'll be interesting to see how this progresses, and considering the resurgence of Mario's big entries from late 2011 we may see New Super Mario Bros. 2 prompt another bump in sales.

[source gamesindustry.biz]