The 3DS gets first million-seller, free 3D Excitebike coming

[Philip Lelyveld comment: the 3D Lab has Nintendogs + Cats available for guests to play]

[By Ben Kuchera, ars technica]

The Nintendo 3DS has certified its first million seller with Nintendogs + Cats, which has sold approximately 1.71 million units worldwide. This is not a surprise: the game is first-party, a sequel to an already-popular franchise, comes in multiple flavors with different breeds of dogs, and it has been heavily promoted by Nintendo. This continues Nintendo’s trend of first-party games finding success on its own hardware.

According to Fox Business, the company has sold 3.61 million 3DS systems as of the end of March, short of the 4 million unit goal. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata described the sales as “weaker than expected.”

In other news, Iwata announced that there will be a port of the original Excitebike with 3D effects given to gamers when the 3DS eShop goes live at an indeterminate time in the future. This will be a limited-time offer, and there were no regions specified. Let’s hope this isn’t limited to Japan; after all, who doesn’t want to play a 3D Excitebike?

Nintendo is sharing some mixed news, with profits down, 3DS sales lagging, but first-party games continuing to do well and a new console on the horizon. This should be a very interesting E3.

See the original post here: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/04/the-3ds-gets-first-million-seller-free-3d-excitebike-coming.ars