Animal Crossing Helps Nintendo 3DS Maintain Lead in North America

The latest NPD figures confirm that the Nintendo 3DS is once again crowned the leader of the US video game market.

The Nintendo 3DS was, as of July, the best selling console for the third month in a row - with sales increasing 14% over the same period last year. The last time this occurred in the portable domain was with the Nintendo DS between October and December 2010.

3DS software sales also increased 45%, mainly due to the stellar performance of Animal Crossing: New Leaf - selling 150,000 physical/digital units. There are now over 660,000 new Animal Crossing mayors in North America alone.

However, despite the continual strong performance of the 3DS, industry sales overall declined 19 percent to $443 million as hardware took a 34% hit down to $99.4 million. This may well be attributed to consumers waiting for the bigger software and new hardware releases towards the end of 2013.