The Nintendo 3DS is the talk of the town these days. Retailers have hailed the handheld's March 27 launch in the U.S. as a success, and even analysts agree.

"The 3DS launch in North America and Europe produced sales that Nintendo should be proud of," said EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich in an interview with Industry Gamers. "Given the awareness and hype over the 3DS, I'd expect week 1 3DS sales to surpass week 1 DS sales from 2004."

When it launched back in 2004, the original DS sold 500,000 units in 10 days in North America. In 2005, it sold 87,000 units in the UK during its first weekend on retail shelves.

Sales projections are high, but there's no need for those without a 3DS yet to worry about sudden shortages. Divnich noted that with Nintendo shipping around 1.9 million units to North America and Europe there is no danger of stores running out of stock. DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole agrees.

"Nintendo said last week that they had record pre-orders BUT they expected plenty of stock and no shortages at stores," he commented. "I think it was really down to just having a full supply where past systems there has always been trouble getting manufacturing up in time for a launch. We think it will be a very successful system.

"Nintendo forecast shipping 4 million units of the 3DS through March 31," Cole continued. "That is just a huge amount of hardware. It would be an absolute mind blowing record if they sold out of all of them in such a short time. By contrast the Wii shipped 3 million worldwide in its launch period (which was mid-Nov to 12/31/06). In other words, we could see Nintendo announcing some records soon when figures are tallied."

Via [Industry Gamers]

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