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On July 28th, a shocking and unprecedented announcement came from Nintendo — The price of Nintendo’s latest handheld console, the 3DS, would be cut to $169.99 starting August 12th.
Now, if you’re not a 3DS owner, you probably thought this was great news. However, for those who shelled out the $250 to pick up the Nintendo 3DS on launch day, they were less than impressed.
To pacify original 3DS owners, Nintendo is offering them 20 free games for their handheld console, for being “Ambassadors”. However, not everyone is pleased by this. Some gamers already own some of the “free” games, and feel cheated by Nintendo’s sudden price drop. Remember, the 3DS has only been available for a few short months. However, it’s common knowledge that the 3DS hasn’t been selling as well as Nintendo hoped.
I’m still guessing that a “3DS Lite” or “3DS XL” will be released sometime in the future. Then, we’ll all be suckers once more.
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I’m a day 1 adopter of the 3DS and I’m quite happy with the arrangement. The dollar amount of the 20 downloads exceeded the amount of the price drop so in my opinion I’m still coming out ahead. And yes, I do own a good portion of the games… in NES cartridge form. Even the 10 GBA games aren’t something you can just insert into your 3DS and play. I will probably have a number of them too. However, there are a number of them I do not have and have never played; I know I’m going to get some great new games retro games to try out as well as some tried and true classics to carry around in my pocket. There’s a reason why The Legend of Zelda sells well every single time the game is released on a new download service or re-released on a handheld – the game is simply timeless. This is the case with most of Nintendo’s own games.
And, btw, when Sony negligently allowed hackers to steal my and 70+ million other peoples’ identities they offered us 2 free games, out of a selection of 5 old games. And in my opinion the only 2 worth getting were the ones most fans probably already had, on the same system. Nintendo simply has experienced sluggish sales and they offer us 10 times the number of games? Sure the PSN games are new[ish] HD games, but I’ll take the 20 retro games on my portable device over the 2 games I’d play once or twice on the PS3 any day.
Thank you Nintendo for showing me that you’re trying to do better by your fans. We support you.