Nintendo just announced that the Nintendo 3DS will drop to $169.99, starting on August 12. That’s 80 bucks cheaper than the previous MSRP of $249.99, and one helluva indication of how well the system is doing. 800,000 people have picked up a system but that’s nowhere near what they were hoping for.
“For anyone who was on the fence about buying a Nintendo 3DS, this is a huge motivation to buy now,” said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime in a press release. “We are giving shoppers every incentive to pick up a Nintendo 3DS, from an amazing new price to a rapid-fire succession of great games.”
Well, he’s mostly right. But the system has only been out for four months! Sorry, early adopters. Isn’t it nice how they waited on the price drop till after the new Zelda was out?
So what if you bought one early and are feeling like a sucker? Nintendo is rewarding you with ten free game- NES and Game Boy Advance games, that is. Hrm.
If you connect to the Nintendo eShop once before 11:59 on August 11th, you’ll be registered in their Nintendo 3DS Ambassador program. (Hope for early price drops, I guess?)
Starting Sept. 1, Nintendo 3DS Ambassadors will be able to download 10 NES™ Virtual Console™ games at no charge and before they are available in the Nintendo eShop to the general public. These games, including Super Mario Bros.™, Donkey Kong Jr.™, Balloon Fight™, Ice Climber™ and The Legend of Zelda™, are slated to become paid downloadable games, but Ambassadors get them early for free. Once the paid versions of the games are posted to the Nintendo eShop later in the year, the updated versions will be available to Ambassadors for download at no cost.
By the end of 2011, Nintendo will provide Ambassadors with 10 Game Boy Advance Virtual Console games. These include games like Yoshi’s Island™: Super Mario™ Advance 3, Mario Kart™: Super Circuit, Metroid™ Fusion, WarioWare™, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ and Mario vs. Donkey Kong™. These games will be available exclusively to Ambassadors, and Nintendo currently has no plans to make these 10 games available to the general public on the Nintendo 3DS in the future.
Anyway, this price definitely makes the system much more enticing. I’ve been holding off picking one up because of the price point (though you could just send me one, Nintendo!) but some of the upcoming games look too good to pass up. Plus, Nintendo’s been doing some interesting things with the little system lately- it’s now got the ability to stream movies from Netflix, as well as watch 3D shorts via their new Nintendo Video service.
They’re also quick to point out that Star Fox 64 3D arrives on September 9th, followed by Super Mario 3D Land in November, Mario Kart 7 in December and Kid Icarus: Uprising during the holiday season. So we’ll have all the usual suspects around, but will this be enough to save the little system?
Note that this comes on top of news that they posted a large Q1 loss, and slashed their full-year outlook from 175 billion yen all the way down to 35. Yikes.
The Wii U doesn’t seem to have done much for the company or its stock, which has lost 30 percent in the past 3 months. Nintendo still thinks it can sell 16 million 3DS units worldwide by the end of the year but has lowered its forecasts for the original DS and Wii.
So- not such good news for the big N, but good for anyone looking to picking up the latest piece of technology for under two bills.