Dec. 11, 2014

Overall sales of Nintendo 3DS software in November increased by more than 40 percent over the same month in 2013, thanks in part to three huge games:

• Pokémon Omega Ruby and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire: The next great Pokémon adventures for Nintendo 3DS launched on Nov. 21 and have already sold nearly 1.5 million combined physical and digital units in the U.S. alone.
• Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS: The best-selling individual portable game in the U.S. so far in 2014, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS has sold more than 1.5 million physical and digital units in the U.S. since it launched on Oct. 3.

November was also a strong month for Nintendo on the console side, as sales of Wii U hardware and software increased by more than 10 percent and more than 90 percent, respectively, over the same period in 2013. In fact, the week of Nov. 23 was the biggest single week of Wii U hardware sales since the system launched in November 2012. Other Wii U highlights for the month include:

• Super Smash Bros. for Wii U has sold nearly 710,000 combined units since launching on Nov. 21. With a current Metacritic score of 92, the latest iteration in Nintendo’s venerable fighting franchise is one of the best-reviewed games in the current generation of systems.
• Nov. 21 also saw the arrival of amiibo, Nintendo’s new platform where gaming’s most recognizable characters can be used in different ways in many compatible games. Sales of amiibo are approximately equal to sales of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U so far, while Link, Mario and Pikachu (in that order) have been the best-selling figures to date.