Nintendo sells more than 200,000 3DS games after eShop closure

The Nintendo 3DS, the company’s 2011 successor to the Nintendo DS, was discontinued in 2020, but the handheld console has continued to have a dedicated fanbase. While it has been much harder for 3DS owners to purchase new console games since the Wii U/3DS eShop shut downs of late March, they have somehow persisted. Nintendo reported that in its latest quarterly earnings, it sold approximately 210,000 3DS video games over the last three month.

3DS Hardware sales were unchanged at 75.94million units from the previous earnings report, while Software sales increased to 391.59million. It’s not as huge of an increase as sales posted in winter, before the eShop closure, where there was an increase of 1.28 million sales, as Axios’ Stephen Totilo pointed out on Twitter. The 3DS does not appear to be as popular. The console is no longer available, but it still remains a favorite among certain users.

Nintendo’s Wii U console, which was released a year after the 3DS in 2012, had no movement on its listed numbers. This doesn’t mean that no games were sold, but that the number was not high enough to reach a threshold on its estimates.

With the eShop shutdown, these sales were likely all of physical copies of games available on the console — a bunch of 3DS games never got physical releases, so those, unfortunately, remain unavailable legally. While you can still buy 3DS game at places like GameStop or Target and on used marketplaces, older titles may not be as easy to locate. Nintendo still supports the console’s online servers, meaning you can still play games with multiplayer; it’s not clear how long Nintendo will keep these running. In 2014, Nintendo shut down online servers for Wii DS DSi and DSii games.

Nintendo introduced the 3DS handheld console at E3 2010, before releasing in 2011. It was a 3D upgrade for the DS, but it ended up more as a novelty. Nintendo released the Nintendo 2DS in 2013, a console with lower costs and no 3D capability. The New Nintendo 3DSYou can also find out more about the following: 3DS XL came later years later, before Nintendo released the New Nintendo 2DS XL — a bigger version of the 2015 release — in 2017, a month following the Nintendo Switch’s release.

As of March 31, Nintendo’s top-selling 3DS games are Mario Kart 7, Pokémon X You can also find out more about the following: Pokémon Y, Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon, Pokémon Omega RubyYou can also find out more about the following: Pokémon Alpha Sapphire, New Super Mario Bros. 2” Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Nintendo did not update this list with this quarter’s financial results.