| happydolphin said: I made a typo in my original post, see fix above... my bad :( @no offense. None taken, we're just talking. I don't think it's a precedent, nor a trend Nintendo wishes to keep. Like I tried to explain, Nintendo only did this in this circumstance. The reason why they were aggressive with the 3DS in my opinion, like you saw above and I'll dive deeper, is that the PSP had managed to snag a good portion of the japanese software support, SW that normally should have been coming out for the market leader like in every other gen. Seeing that easily migrate onto the PSV, Nintendo aggressively cut that short, and secured Monster Hunter (main series) on the portable. Why would they do this, why was japanese software so important? Well for one it's what kept the PSP well alive past a point where the DS had completely dominated it in sales. Second, there was a chance that the Vita could use that momentum to beat the 3DS (which was off to a very shaky start). The 3DS' success was far from guaranteed as your post would suggest, just backtrack a year ago and none of us were certain as to how well the 3DS would do, take a look at some of the older Nintendo forum threads, there was much debate. With the PSP already capturing a much larger portion of the pie than any competitor before it, there was no reason to believe that, on round 2, that Sony could not actually come up on top, at least on the long run, with a better product (the Vita is much more interesting than the PSP in every way you look at it, bar games atm). Ultimately that loss of market dominance wouldn't so badly matter, as Nintendo has already survived loss of markets leadership, but I think Nintendo was aggressive here for two reasons. 1) They have never lost market dominance in the handheld market before, and I believe they wanted to fully secure that position beyond doubt. 2) The handheld space has been Nintendo's lifeline for as long as we can remember. 3) I believe Nintendo saw the threat of mobile devices and wanted to be the leader of the alternative (dedicated handhelds) so as to better control and fend off the threat. I think that should give more depth to my original post. |
I think I understand better why I've been so confused now... it appears we've been talking about completely different things (at least in relation to my original post which you quoted).
I have no doubt that all these things you've said about the 3DS are true - I haven't researched it all that much, so I'm sure all those reasons for a price cut due to circumstance are correct. I have no argument with that.
What I said in the original post, and the point I'm trying to get across is: the effect of that price cut - intentional or not - has set this kind of barrier where people think "Vita will only be able to succeed with a price cut too, because it worked for 3DS". I'm sure Nintendo weighed up the pro's and con's of a price cut when deciding on the future of the 3DS and decided it was the right move, but just because it worked for them does not automatically mean it's the best solution for the competition. That's all I was getting at.
