Ironic that the Rueters article on the Wii News channel inadvertantly sums up Nintendo's troubles thusly: "... needed to dramatically drop prices just five months after it launched the 3D version of it's DS handheld device..." As if the 3DS was just another iteriation of the DS like the DSi and DSXL
My son sells electronics and this is a misconception he sees daily. People don't get it's a completely new system and don't see why they should pay so much for it. The fact that there is zero compelling software out for it only excerbates the problem.
DS sales continue to be relatively strong (around 120K last week) despite being such an old system, lacking new games (there's some but not much and dwindling fast) and already being replaced. At this point every DS sold is a 3DS unsold. That is a huge problem.
Nintendo has put itself into a precarious situation with 3DS. By immediately announcing the Wii's dismise after launching 3DS puts the 3DS as the lone system at it's power level. Every other system on the market (or soon to be) 360, PS3, PC, iPad/iPhone, WiiU, Vita are all roughly equivelant in power. The same game can be ported to all of those platforms. Combined that is the biggest user base the industry has ever seen. Or you can make a completely seperate game for 3DS. If 3DS had DS or Wii's base there would be a good case for that. But if it's base remains small - It's unprofitable for anyone, even Nintendo, to develop for it.
With the price cut 3DS now will cost about the same as the older DS models. Everyone is waiting for an announcement that those models will be further discounted. But that wouldn't help Nintendo at all. If they make DS cheaper they'll put themselves back into the exact same position but now losing even more money. Nintendo will need to either keep them at the same price or discontinue the original DS line completely. If that was the case now, then the 3DS would have the combined sales of both systems - 191k (this week) and would easily be the top selling system on the market.
Does the DS need to die so that the 3DS can live?
