For much of March, regular television advertising was all but replaced by public service announcements. Understandable really: Who wants to be the official sponsor of the biggest tragedy to hit Japan since the war? But what if you had just rolled out a new product and wanted to promote it?
This was the dilemma that faced Nintendo as it tried to promote its brand new glasses-free 3-D game portable, the Nintendo 3DS, which had launched in late February — any steam it was picking up was quickly lost when the March 11 mega-quake hit. Sales went from 96,000 units during the week of the quake (which hit on a Friday), and plummeted to 61,000 units the following week, according to Japanese retail tracker Media Create.
But in the weeks following March 11's earthquake, a curious thing happened: While sales of the Nintendo 3DS game console began to slide, sales of rival handheld, the Sony PlayStation Portable, actually picked up.