The Nintendo 3DS has just had an unprecedented price cut. It hasn’t sold nearly as well as Nintendo wanted, and to combat this they’ve dropped the price by roughly a third – worldwide – and introduced a whole slew of free games to appease anyone that spent their hard earned cash on it when it released.
That includes me, and several other members of the team here. £200’s a fair chunk of money (even that was heavily discounted) and although naturally I’ve not got any less out of it than I would if the price had been lower on day one, you can’t help wonder whether we’ve all been guilty of just rushing into yet another piece of new hardware.
For some of us (myself and Dan mostly) we’re big Nintendo fans, but even us two can’t argue that the 3DS launched without key games and – in some cases like the Browser and eShop – features.
[drop2]Nintendo’s press release is buoyant, though. It promises AAA games (Star Fox 64 3D, Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7 and Kid Icarus: Uprising) for the near future (although that’s likely to be Dec 2011 onwards for the latter three) and, as you’d expect, talks up the price drop rather than making it sound negative.“For anyone who was on the fence about buying a Nintendo 3DS, this is a huge motivation to buy now,” said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. “We are giving shoppers every incentive to pick up a Nintendo 3DS, from an amazing new price to a rapid-fire succession of great games.”
Those games might end up being great (and I’m a huge Mario Kart fan) but the simple fact is that until Zelda came out, most of the games were middling at best, with Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon the surprise at launch. The rest of the first party line-up, including Steel Diver and Pilotwings, just didn’t resonate with the public enough. Games like Dead or Alive and Street Fighter were great, though, but who’s going to buy a system just for them?
And then there’s the eShop, which only today is starting to kick off with original, made for 3DS content that’s not a port or a Pokemon-em-up – and even that’s the much released Let’s Golf, which has been on plenty of formats already. Nintendo should have had top tier games out for day one, they should have had the browser ready, and they should have filled up that eShop.
For the early adopters, a peace offering. Ten NES games from the beginning of September (presumably one a week, or something) and another ten Game Boy Advance titles later in the year. These are most welcome, and it looks from the range (Ice Climber, Mario Bros, Zelda, WarioWare, Metroid Fusion) that Nintendo aren’t scrimping on big hitters. If this is carried over to Europe wholesale then I’ll be chuffed.
But what about the rest of the team here?
“I’m not overly surprised by the announcement of a 3DS price cut,” said Dan. “How Nintendo expected the console to sell at a premium price point without the backup of a strong software line-up confuses me. We are being constantly told that good games are coming (and they are), but what about now? Hopefully this cut will entice more gamers to consider what is a very good console, in my opinion at least.”
“The few cancelled or delayed projects, the single save issue and the high price of software in this market all make for a beleaguered start for the device,” added Peter. “The good thing is, the 3DS is solid tech. Sold on a gimmick for sure but a powerful little thing with plenty of capability. A price drop, especially such a substantial one, might just kick start the market enough to encourage those delayed or cancelled projects back on track. And with the software comes the sales.”
“I didn’t think the 3DS was over-priced at launch,” said Greg. “I think the problem was it looked too much like the cheaper DSi for consumers to appreciate the differences and recognise the 3DS’ value. The price drop is an incredibly aggressive move by Nintendo in a very uncertain economic period.”
[drop]”Not only should it significantly boost sales, in conjunction with the forthcoming games line-up, but it should help silence some of the vocal critics of the 3DS’ original price who were oblivious to how much the 3DS brought to the table and that there is such a thing as inflation. Though they will now just say “told you so”.”“Assuming we see a similar price drop that should put us at around £110-140 by my quick back of the envelope calculations,” added Kris. “For me that seems exceptionally cheap, but I’m still not sure the games are there yet for me to justify it. When we get around to the releases Nintendo outlined at E3 I’ll probably consider it, but I don’t know that I play on my original DS enough to really make me feel it’s a worthwhile purchase. Even so, it’s all about the games. No point laying out £100+ if there’s nothing to play.”
“I’m pleased by the free games and not that fussed about the price drop,” said Jen. “I was a launch day owner for the 3DS. Yes the launch line up wasn’t brilliant but I still chose to buy it knowing that the system would be cheaper sooner or later. It’s just how things work when it comes to technology and cars too. Price drop is good for everyone. Should mean more owners and more attention paid to a potentially great system.”
“Plus I get free games which is fine by me! I’ve seen an odd backlash on the idea which seems bizarre to me. Not like Nintendo had to offer anything.”
“One thing does bother me though,” concludes Dan, “with the final price ultimately being decided by the retailer, will gamers want to part with their cash or once again wait for a couple of months for another price war?”
Home page image: Reuters.
tonyyeb
One thing that isn’t mentioned is the upcoming release of the Vita. Are Nintendo trying to get as big a user base as possible before another handheld gaming device hits the shops?
teflon
I don’t think Nintendo are really bothered by the Vita. This is more an internal concern that they haven’t sold enough units, and that if the price point is too high, then they will suffer a truly dismal winter.
Don’t forget that the Wii has also stalled, somewhat, since the insane highs of 2008, and the 3DS is now their most current platform whilst we wait for the WiiU next year. Investors will take a slow winter as a bad omen, and it’s better to react now whilst investor reaction might actually be quite positive, than move too late.
Anyway, no matter what they do, they can’t really hope to match up to the iPod Touch…
skibadee
would think they are a tad bit concerned tef.
Charmed_Fanatic
I brought the 3DS on release day, played with it for about 3 days, now its in the draw, play my Lite alot more than it. Just waiting for some good games.
cc_star
Games will come & indeed are coming. Remember how people felt about the PS3 for a year or more
Jaffa-the-Cake
With the ps3 it was different, the launch games it did have were great. It also was able to be other things aswell as a gaming platform with it’s web browser and multimedia capabilities. The 3ds has none of this. It’s launch games were mostly shovel ware hastily upgraded fornthe 3d. It is bereft of features which should be standard from launch by now, eshop etc. If a parent was to choose between the 3ds and an iPod theyd never choose the 3ds because it is a machine solely focused on 3d which means everything else on it was neglected, including it’s poor software lineup
nofi
Your tense is confusing, but the 3DS does have a browser (now) and can play some media stuff. Sure, it’s basic, but it can play music and show images.
Crocadillian
It takes the 3DS 5-6 minutes to load a certain album for playback. Thats not good…
cc_star
Even after 5 years or whatever & many, many fw updates it takes the PS3 browser to 5 to 6 minutes to load all but the simplest & most ancient of web pages. That certainly isn’t good.
The 3DS launched a good mix of core Ninty titles & 3rd party behemoths, the mega Ninty franchises of Mario Land & Mario Kart will be launching at the busier time of the year, which is hardly surprising but until then there has has been Pilotwings, Nintendogs amongst others following them was Zelda, with massive 3rd party titles like Streetfighter & Resi Evil. Alongside Mario Land & Mario Kart will be Metal Gear… Hardly a lack of AAA quality content.
All that’s happening here is gaming is in decline, the popularity of the Wii & DS can’t be sustained. The size of the gaming market is shrinking even if some companies are grabbing a bigger share of this ever declining hardware market.
There are so many ways for people to get their gaming kicks that don’t involve £200-£300 home or portable consoles.
All that’s happened here is that a console launches at a reasonably busy time of the year, but not the busiest. It did this so it got a full financial year’s sales and it would have gained so developer & customer momentum before the busiest period when most of the annual sales are done. Perhaps it didn’t gain the required momentum, but a price-cut was always going to happen before the busiest period so it compares extremely favourably to the PSV.
Seeing as the DS/i is the most popular handheld, what are upgraders going to get, a £140 handheld with Mario Land, Mario Kart, Layton, Metal Gear and a back catalogue including Zelda, Nintendogs+Cats, SF & Resi, or a handheld that is roughly £100 more with some games they probably won’t recognise?
Of course punters are likely to choose neither as their MP3 players/mobiles offer rich gaming experiences.
This may not be a defensive move by Ninty but an aggressive masterplan, although iOS & Droid devices will be the winners with PlayStation & Ninty left squabbling over what’s left, which is probably a large enough niche to be well worth fighting for.
Deathbrin
But Metal Gear is delayed?
skibadee
cc you must have a crap net mine loads in about 10 seconds lol.
Peter Rushton
Must be great news for Sony to be reading this, hopefully with the right kind of adverising campaign, the Vita can be launched with similar levels of success along the lines of the ps2 hopefully.
cc_star
I think they’d be more worried if the size of the pie they want a share of is shrinking. They could grow their share of the ‘pie’ massively but it won’t amount to anything if the ‘pie’ is shrinking.
Hmmmm pie
teflon
Not really, if anything it’s bad news. The price point that the 3DS launched at, and that the Vita will launch at, didn’t work well enough. Add to that, many potential buyers will tend to focus on a single platform at least to start off with, and the pricing of the 3DS will attract more purchases, combined with the usual iOS shenanigans, and this just makes the Vita’s release more difficult.
GTRsannin
In my book 3DS and Vita are different. 3DS didn’t really bring anything new it is more like the older version as Vita is going to bring a lot of new stuff. For most people the 2nd analogue stick is a huge thing cause with that alone developers can make a lot of different games for it. I’ve heard even people who aren’t interested in handheld devices are going to buy Vita
skibadee
I’m one of them so are my friends never been interested in handhelds since gameboy but the Vita looks amazing plus the PS3 combo makes it a must have imo.
cc_star
I understand sales are sluggish, but it launched at a point in the year when the summer lull was just ahead.
I understood sales around the launch period compared favourably with the DS at the same point in its lifecycle, but publishers don’t release system sellers in the summer & sales are naturally sluggish anyway.
The 3DS does however need momentum & we all know how well the PS3 worked once the price dropped to a more palatable amount, this pricedrop would have happened when the PSV launched anyway, IMO it has just been bought forward to try and build momentum and get people talking about it.
The pricedrop has come in August just like the PS3s and means the new pricing will be firmly in people’s minds during Sept to Jan, when a) people will be buying consoles in much bigger numbers than May to Jul b) Lots more system selling games will be on store’s shelves.
With vast amounts of experience in retail like I have, August is the key time to hit the golden quarter running. A Perfectly timed move by Ninty, even if some people will try & manipulate it into something else.
Personally, I’m still waiting for the 3DSi though as I’ll only ever buy second SKU’s from now on following my PSP & PS3 experiences. They’re always cheaper, more reliable, smaller, lighter, better battery and they have had time to build up a catalogue of games.
bunimomike
Good article, Al.
It’s rare I talk about personal gripes on TSA but this is one of them. It felt like we were inundated with 3DS this and 3DS that at launch. Sure, that makes sense, but the general vibe was overly positive; overly enthusiastic, with all rationality thrown out of the window when now, on reflection, we’re seeing a sobering state of affairs.
The sales weren’t great. Why? A multitude of reasons. The games line-up looked shocking and STILL the reviews were rolling in with decent(ish) scores. When I say “shocking” I mean “a re-hash of so many titles that it wouldn’t surprise me if this ended up biting them on the arse”. I really didn’t like seeing such good scores for a reworked title without some very obvious “but this is still the same game” or something similar to let people know that new IP is still off in the near-future.
My frustration is industry wide and not just with TSA. It’s lovely being swept up in a wave of excitement but this has had lacklustre sales, overpriced hardware, a gimmick to many (3D) and titles that appear to be almost identically named to their predecessors for very obvious reasons. This is something all new hardware suffers from (to a small degree) but the 3DS was positively wallowing in it!
For me, and with no mention of Sony, this is the reason why they’ve dropped their prices.
I hope the perspective of what Nintendo did can be learnt from (once again, industry wide) when the Wii U comes out.
nofi
Our scores were fair. Pilotwings is a great game, as are both DoA and Street Fighter, the rest were reviewed accordingly, as far as I remember.
Sales aren’t as terrible as some are making out, mind, over 4 million I think.
bunimomike
Agreed with perspective being shown on the sales. They truly are solid sales. However, my comments were a bit vague and it wasn’t so much at the scores in the reviews but the general sentiment and vibe from so many positive sounding TSA articles during the launch period.
I think, with the very nature of TSA (eg. primarily a Sony site but encompassing so much more these days) that there’s enough positive and negative opinion here to bring balance with a lot of Sony stuff. We knew the launch wasn’t a good one and it showed. We see that the PSP hasn’t been a raging success and it shows. However, the 3DS felt like it was shrouded in a ‘Cloak of Awesomesauce +2′ and it coloured the objectivity from time-to-time. The games are fine when we look at them in isolation but not as a new platform coming out where so many felt (or were) rehashes and that people simply didn’t see the reason to part with their cash (and their old DS’) to move into a world of handheld 3D.
That’s what this is all about. Here’s our old hardware. Here’s our new hardware. Now, here’s the reason to sell that and get this! Hell, keep both!! Nintendo failed this time around and it’s reflected in not-so-great sales figures. Once again, they’re not bad but Nintendo’s management know that it’s not been the usual raging success and the reasons are transparent.
nemesisND1derboy
4 million hardware sales or software sales?
skibadee
the 6 year old PSP is out selling it 2-1 for the quarter.
DrNate86
I know what you mean Mike, I was very nearly seduced by the 3DS excitement and almost ended up buying one on release, but the price always just held me back. I’m glad I haven’t got one though, as there is just nothing to play on it at the moment that interests me.
As a site devoted to gaming, it is understandable and reassuring that we get passionate about upcoming hardware and games. It can occasionally be slightly misleading though, when excitement clouds reasonable doubt.
Crocadillian
Wow, this made me laugh. Im still smiling, X)
Totally unsurprising to be honest, gimmicks can only go so far, the 3DS had me playing it for a few days, followed by months of not touching it. I somehow don’t think Nintendo will learn from this, if their game lineup for the 3DS stays as it is, as they are still going to be mainly the only publisher to support the platform, with the same old worn, predictable franchises that id rather just play on the Gamecube if anything. Why these franchises are happily taken by people AND press without more consideration amazes me.
The only good thing from this is free games, other than that Nintendo is dead to me :l.
Crocadillian
Btw, the program is the same for Europe: http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/news/2011/nintendo_3ds_ambassador_programme_44123.html
stonyk
I’ve read the article and sorry if I missed it but are there any examples of the price cut? Where do I go? Which is the cheapest offer? I looked in Game today and it was £200 for a 3DS with £41 trade in on my DS. If the price came down to under £150 I would buying one asap!
Dan Lee
That’s one of my concerns. The US had a set RRP, so a price cut is easy. Over here there are several different prices, so who knows who is going to discount to what price.
teflon
$80 could be very loosely equated to a £50 drop. Apply that to Game, which is usually near the top end of pricing, and it’ll come down to £150, with a possibility of £140-ish… I wouldn’t expect any lower than that, though.
R4U Eldave0
Keep your eyes peeled on Amazon.co.uk. I got one a couple of months ago for 130. I then traded it in for 179 store credit at Blockbuster :D
Crocadillian
It’s recently being sold for around £160, so I was surprised to hear this cut at first until I thought about the weird variances in price…
Watchful
Remember the UK is different to the other territories as Nintendo left it to the retailers to set the price here. As a result there’s more variation.
Crocadillian
yeah, I forgot X)
Watchful
Not surprised you can’t find any examples yet, the price doesn’t take effect until August 11th. :-)
stonyk
Thats what I’d missed! Thanks. Thats a week before my birthday too :-)
mynameisblair
I’m a big Nintendo fan too!
My spin on it was: it’s not the hardware that’s overpriced. It’s a really solid system, with a lot of great features and I’m happy with what I paid for it.
The problem, to me, is the price of some of the games. Super Monkey Ball in particular; when we’ve got the iPhone version for pennies.
It’s a great system, free games are great for existing owners and a price drop will help drive sales, surely!
R4U Eldave0
They can drop the price and release as many decent games for it as they like but if you can’t play it for more than a couple of hours without having to put it on charge then it fails as an on-the-go console.
OneShotWook
Most returned console ever,a mainstream press headline that can’t have helped the sales of this thing.