Nintendo have admitted that the 3DS has been somewhat lacking in America and Europe as sales of the device are slow.

Speaking to investors, Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata said “What we should say first is that while the Nintendo 3DS has a certain degree of sales momentum in Japan, the momentum in the US and Europe is currently weak.”

In Japan though it’s a totally different picture, with the 3DS selling in abundance. ““Sales of the Nintendo 3DS are constant in Japan and in fact we could say the sales volume is exceeding our forecast at the start of this fiscal year.

“After the beginning of this calendar year, the average unit sales have been 83,000 units on a weekly basis. This means that about 55 per cent of all gaming hardware sales in Japan consist of the Nintendo 3DS. Now, with the level of sales momentum for the Nintendo 3DS created since the last year end, we would say the centre of the Japanese video game market has been the Nintendo 3DS.”

The US and EU markets are key to Nintendo due to their sheer size in comparison to the Japanese market. He admitted that sales in the regions should really be much larger than they currently are, as they only hold 20 per cent of total video game sales.

“Considering that the US and European markets are larger than the Japanese market in terms of the size of the population, sales in the US and Europe are supposed to be larger.

“As a result, the sales proportion of the Nintendo 3DS is now about 20 per cent of the total video game sales in those markets. Thus, solid sales momentum has not been created.

“For those investors who understand this situation, they might think that our earnings situation will not turn around in the way we have mentioned, or they might think it will take a much longer time than we expect to revitalize the profit situation.”