This is the top 20 software sales chart for the German market in May. There are seven titles for Nintendo 3DS and the top 10 includes five Nintendo 3DS titles.

There are eight Nintendo 3DS titles in the French top 20 in May. This is the highest number of Nintendo 3DS titles outside the Japanese market.

From January to March, Nintendo 3DS did not have much of a presence in the UK market. There were no titles for the platform in the top 20. However, as you can see, four Nintendo 3DS titles are present in the May chart.

As you have seen, with the launches of key titles, Nintendo 3DS has started to regain momentum in the U.S. and European markets. That’s because software sells hardware.

The most important title for this summer sales season is “Animal Crossing: New Leaf,” which was released last Sunday in the U.S. and will be released this upcoming Friday in Europe.
In Japan, it has become a hit with sales of more than four million units. A wide variety of consumers, including women, enjoy this title and it has given great momentum to the sales of Nintendo 3DS. Also, since consumers tend to play this game continually, they actively use Nintendo 3DS over an extended period. This game has greatly contributed to the platform in many ways. The success of this title is crucial for the future of Nintendo 3DS in the U.S. and European markets.
Fortunately, many pre-orders of the game have been placed at retailers both in the U.S. and in Europe, and it has received very good review scores.
“Animal Crossing: New Leaf” was launched in the U.S. on Sunday, June 9 and is having an immediate impact. The digital version of the game set a new record for launch day sales in the Nintendo eShop and sales of Nintendo 3DS hardware were nearly four times greater than the previous week.
Coming next, “Mario & Luigi: Dream Team” will be available in July in Europe and in August in the U.S.

Then, on October 12, we will release “Pokémon X Version” and “Pokémon Y Version” globally on the same day, for the first time in the Pokémon series. These games will be totally redesigned for Nintendo 3DS and full of novel attractions. We believe these titles will accelerate the trend that Nintendo 3DS has gained during the first half of this year so that the platform will be in top condition by the year-end sales season.

As I have told you today, we plan to intensively release key first-party titles into the market throughout this year so that the Nintendo 3DS business in all global markets will gain momentum.

As we have explained during Nintendo Direct and other means, here is the specific software release schedule.
Nintendo 3DS has been gaining momentum since March of this year due to our back-to-back releases of key titles. I think we have been able to take advantage of Nintendo’s unique position of being able to provide markets with a strong first-party software lineup to energize its hardware sales.
Some worry that an intensive release pace this year might result in a poor first-party software lineup next year.
However, our internal software development teams are now at a stage where we can expect software launches without too many intervals. We still have many unannounced game titles. Therefore, we expect to release a sufficient number of first-party titles for the platform next year as well.

Now, I would like to mention third-party software.
As handheld devices occupy a large share of the video game market and Nintendo 3DS has become popular in Japan, Japanese software developers are eagerly assigning their top teams to develop Nintendo 3DS titles.
Many of these titles have sales potential for the Western markets as well. Nintendo is working hard to publish such titles in those regions.

Of course, Western third-party software developers also have made games suitable for handheld devices, and as you can see, they will release various Nintendo 3DS titles, which differ greatly from our first-party games.
This is the third year for Nintendo 3DS. Through the enriched software lineup, we aim to vastly expand the business of this platform in the Western markets as well as in the Japanese market.