Nintendo 3DS sales hit three million

Nintendo has sold over three million units of the 3DS portable gaming system, with president of the Japanese gaming company Satoru Iwata saying that he felt the console had "regained its momentum."

Much of this resurgence in 3DS gaming has been put down to new versions of first party titles like Mario Kart, which sold almost half a million copies in the first few days of December. In the same week of its release, Nintendo was able to push over 215,000 3DS consoles in Japan alone.

TechCrunch has it that Iwata believes Nintendo will pass four million global unit sales of the hand-held by February next year, thanks to higher sales during the Christmas period and the continued strong sales of its own games. He has a point too, as the 3DS launched with no real first party titles to speak of, leaving it to flounder without any strong games to help push sales. Now though with the release of the new kart-based Mario game and his new platform outing Super Mario 3D Land - which has sold over 500,000 copies in the US alone - Nintendo's handheld may have turned a corner.