| PAOerfulone said: (...) To the best of my knowledge and unless I'm mistaken, that was the only point in Nintendo's history where they had to sell hardware at a loss. Because they had no choice but to take the L for a while in order to get the 3DS off the ground and running - And it came at the cost of the DS' final years/last legs because it's successor was now at the same price range as the DSi models, which effectively killed their legs. If things had gone Nintendo's way, the 3DS would have been successful from the jump, they would've kept its price at $250 and the DS would have gone on selling at a lower, but steadier rate and had a more gradual decline - Which is EXACTLY what they want for the Switch -> Switch 2 transition. |
The 3DS wasn't the only time Nintendo sold hardware at a loss. The GC was sold at a loss for a brief time after its price got slashed to $99.
The Wii U was even worse than the 3DS, because it was sold at a loss from the get-go and it never reached a level of mass production that could get the hardware to break even.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
