2015 Brought a Decent Year of Sales for Nintendo in France

Who would have known. French taste in videogames isn't that bad. Not horrendous as UK...

I'm not surprised France likes Nintendo. Have you seen the top wins for Pokémon ORAS rating battle?
1. Japan
2. Japan
3. Japan
...
20ish.France
and then compared to the Uk which is about 60th place
or something
don't quote me

With Nintendo systems it's never about their great exclusives, it's about all the multiplats it doesn't have, particularly sports and FPS. I do think Ntinod hardware can manage as a different set of experiences when the price is right - see 3DS under $200, cheap Wii - but having the Wii U closely priced to PS4 isn't going to work well when it lacks all of those games.

Bigger picture - PS4 wins this gen, Xbox One and Wii U battle for 2nd. X1 will come in 2nd, but going forward I do think this bodes well for NX maybe becoming the #2 console both this gen and next gen ahead of both X1 and XboxX. MS may even have to bail on dedicating gaming if heir shareholders complain loudly enough, maybe there is no XboxX giving NX a chance to grow.

I like France. Everything that is a niche in the UK - graphic Novels, Japanese manga/anime/games etc has a significantly larger audience in France. It may still be a niche there, but here's the deal: The Tale of Princess Kaguya, a Ghibli film, was released in france 10 months before it was release in the UK.

French resident here, I can confirm that, while people may prefer PS4 and X1, they definitely don't dislike Nintendo stuff.
And, just to brag, as far as I know, we don't have amiibo shortages or sudden delays

"we should remember, of course, that Nintendo's system came out a year before Microsoft's." We should also remember that the Wii U came out a year before the PS4 too, but it still outsold the Wii U by over 400%.

Hmm, good for France!

One thing though, I do know a lot of people here in Dublin (including myself) buy Nintendo games from French website, games work out a little cheaper, and not bothered about the French cover writing. And the euro is so weak up against the pound for a while now, (kills me to buy a game from English company's at the moment) so could be a lot of other euro country's buying from France adding to those numbers, which is a bit of a downer sorry.

I do buy from a lot from other euro countries for the past year, just works at cheaper than UK site or Irish shops, especially Gamestop (booooo).

Anyone else do this? I would think a lot of UK people do this too, cheaper also. Involves a bit or research but you're saving a good bit of cash over the year if you want new releases.

Those are decent numbers at the very least. The PS4 already has an unsurmountable lead this gen when it comes to home consoles, but it remains to be seen how much better than the 3DS it will do at the end.

Nice for Splatoon, not so nice for 3 versions of Fifa in that top 10.

Well Europe isn't totally lost, just UK, serious their taste is the worst thing I ever seen

zey do make great wine, oui. or is that oui u now?

groan

Ah, Nintendolife. Always looking at the bright side of things

Splatoon is the best Nintendo game since Kid Icarus: Uprising. With that said, I am sometimes baffled with how broken the game can be (lag, connection, etc), yet, have played 300 hours of it. I think that means I'm clinically insane.

How about Ancho V Games map? I am not too fond of it. It's more of a middle tier level for me and was disappointed because I was kind of hoping they were gonna save the best for last. But, still, I played it 3 hours consecutively last night. Weird.

Quite a bit of discussion on the France and Germany numbers over on the NeoGAF threads. They basically discovered that the US and the UK make up 75% of the Xbox One's install base (13.6 million out of 18 million). The XB1 isn't exactly all that relevant elsewhere.

At the pace the Xbox One is going, it should hit around 35-40 million when this generation is over. That's a MAJOR decline from the Xbox 360, sharper than any decline Nintendo has seen unless you count Wii -> Wii U (the Wii is a statistical outlier).

Combine that decline with the almost 60% drop off the Halo series has seen when comparing Halo 5 to Halo 3 and Halo 4, and you have an Xbox brand that has an uncertain future.

That's the big takeaway from all the recent sales news.

Also, great to see Splatoon sell 300k in France alone. Remember when people were saying it would only do 300k lifetime worldwide?

@IceClimbers Splatoon has definitely exceeded expectations, and it's still selling pretty well.

@Frank90 I'm from Northern Ireland, I have a Wii, Wii U, 3DS XL & two Nintendo 2DS systems in my house. My brother has exactly the same in his house actually, now I think about it. My niece has a Wii U & 3DS XL. My nephew has a Wii U & 2DS. Another nephew has the same. We might not be typical of the UK, but Nintendo have their fans here. Just saying...

@readyletsgo I live in England but bought my N3DS from France just after release - saved nearly £30 in doing so. That taught me to certainly shop around in the EU a bit, though admittedly I only tend to go Amazon.fr and Amazon.de and ultimately haven't bought anything else since (almost bought a 2DS at Christmas but Nintendo.co.uk had a good enough deal on instead for once).

Perhaps it's reading too much into it, but it perhaps is evidence of a slightly more intellectual culture in France than UK. UK majority is easily swayed by cool and uncool and the Wii U got tagged as uncool pretty early on, whereas the French may be a little more discerning.

@MJKOP Oh I know that are exceptions! I'm from Brazil, and here people is generally dumb and play COD, Fifa/PES, Moba sh*t and GTA, so I'm a exception too. I'm talking about the general market in USA, which is almost sad as the Brazilian one. The luck? The Brazilian market is small.

Nintendo got off to a bad start in the UK during the NES era. due to some unfortunate dealer/distribution deals Sega dominated that market and Nintendo never conquered it like the rest of the world.

Here are some other sales figures for Nintendo in France in 2015:

• Splatoon: 300,000 copies
• Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer: 250,000 copies
• Mario Kart 7: 225,000 copies
• Tomodachi Life: More than 211,000 copies
• New Super Mario Bros. 2: 180,000 copies
• New Style Boutique 2: 130,000 copies
• Amiibo: 1 million figures
• Animal Crossing amiibo cards: 250,000 packs

I have noticed that the life simulation genre seems to be a popular one amongst non-English speaking nations. Recent games in that genre such as Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer and New Style Boutique 2 have sold quite well in regions such as Japan, France, Germany, and Spain, while Animal Crossing New Leaf continues to perform well despite its age. Evergreens such as Mario Kart 7 and New Super Mario Bros 2 also continue to perform incredibly well.

@gcunit
For Nintendo games, Amazon France and Amazon Spain is the way to go. They are always cheaper especially Amazon Spain.

I'm surprised that given all these Xbox One crushing Wii U around, Wii U sales isn't actually that far behind. No doubt Xbox One will come on top in the end, but outside of US market, it might be closer than everyone think.

I've always thought the x1 hasn't been selling as well as everyone thinks it is,I'm 100% it's just hype marketing from MS paid websites,i also still don't understand the ps4 dominance over everything else??

@WireWare Not true, I'm living out near Nice and my local supermarkets (auchan and Leclerc) are ALWAYS out of the Sapltoon Amiibo's....!