A plethora of options to choose from

Nintendo is hoping to give the 3DS a boost of momentum this year by releasing around ten games of its own.

In a meeting with investors during Nintendo’s latest financial results briefing, President Satoru Iwata said the company would be personally shipping ten games that will hopefully change people's perception of the 3DS in the west. The aim is to show consumers that the system is more than just a device to play Mario games on:

To export the momentum to the overseas markets, we plan to actively release our key titles for Nintendo 3DS which could potentially lead the markets this year.

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"Pokémon X/Pokémon Y," to be launched in October worldwide, could be the most-anticipated one and "Animal Crossing: New Leaf," released in Japan last year, will be available in the first half of this year.

We have already announced that "Fire Emblem Awakening," "Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity," "Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon," "Brain Age: Concentration Training" and "LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins" will be released in the first half of this year. For the overseas Nintendo 3DS markets, this year will be a good harvest time of what we have developed for these two years. We plan to intensively and actively sell approximately 10 key titles on our own in order to change the Nintendo 3DS system from a handheld device just to play the Mario series to the one to enjoy a variety of games. Naturally, we will keep the momentum of already-released titles with much sales potential by, for example, having them digitally distributed.

With a large variety of games Nintendo will hope to tempt more people into buying a 3DS. The console hasn't had any trouble convincing players in Japan of its worth; it recently passed the ten million units marker in that region. However, sales in North America and Europe its performance has been less groundbreaking - something Nintendo is clearly trying to change.

Which games are you looking forward to playing most this year? Sound off by leaving a comment.

[source nintendo.co.jp, via nintendoeverything.com]