3DS sells 13.95 million units, but Nintendo still not satisfied

Despite global sales of 13.95 million 3DS hardware units and 49.61 million software units in the latest fiscal year ended March 31, 2013, Nintendo is still not satisfied with the performance of its handheld device outside of Japan.

"The Nintendo 3DS system established itself as the leading platform in Japan," Nintendo said. This was aided by the release of the larger 3DS XL and the overwhelming success of Animal Crossing: New Leaf which sold over three million units in Japan alone. Nintendo also acknowledged the success of New Super Mario Bros. 2 which tallied 6.42 million units in worldwide sales; however, the company was not pleased with the system's performance outside of Japan.

"Although evergreen titles such as New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Paper Mario: Sticker Star, released in this fiscal year, and Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7, released in last fiscal year, became hit titles, they did not generate sufficient sales momentum," the company said. To address the overseas market concern, Nintendo will "concentrate on proactively releasing key Nintendo titles."

Looking ahead, the U.S. and Europe will see the release of Animal Crossing: New Leaf in June 2013, and the latest titles from the Pokémon series, Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, will be release globally in October 2013. Nintendo also plans to "more actively support the Japanese software developers in distributing their key titles overseas." Furthermore, the company will "more actively attempt to boost the sales rate of the downloadable form of packaged software in order to increase the number of new sales opportunities and improve profitability."

With all of these goals in place, Nintendo is looking to sell 18 million 3DS hardware units and 80 million 3DS software units for Financial Year 2014 (April 1, 2013 to March 31, 2014),