I think Nintendo earnd the right to charge $300 for the 3DS, i mean look at what the handheld is offering. I can see people eating this up regardless of the high price tag, in the handheld market we have very little choice and Nintendo must know that.

I say it could be $329 in the states...

Now you are going crazy. You should have held your head up high getting the one right prediction, but you had to double down.

Yeah $299 is way too much for a handheld. I think for home consoles $299 is a fair entry price and for handhelds I'd say $199.

It's not ridiculous like $599 for the PS3 was, but its still too high.

Wow what if the PSP2 comes out around the same time as the 3DS and is only $199 or $249. Could that give PSP2 the edge over 3DS?

Why is everyone compalining that 300 is to much? it's a NEXT gen handheld. Do you remember how much you paid for psp at launch price? yeah.. deal with it.I want to see the complaints about psp2

$299 is not alot... if you have job thats like 1 or 2 pay checks( depending of fequency of pay)

This is not even remotely close to a useful post. Considering exchange rates is terrible for a number of reasons, but I will deal with the most obvious here.

Historically Nintendo home consoles have launched at $200 and 20k yen. The Wii was the first to buck this trend with the 25k yen price. This was matched with a $250 pricetag despite the exchange rate putting it at $219. This was also with an extra pack in game in the USA region in order to further entice people to buy it increasing the effective value a lot.

The other recent one to buck the trend was the DS line. The DS launched at the predictable 15k/150 rates you would expect from the standard 100:1 ratio Nintendo favors using. The DSi, however, bucked that trend in a significant way. It launched at 18.9k yen or $216 in Japan. The USA got it at $170 which is lower than expected based on their history, and much much lower based on exchange rates. The DSi XL operated similarly with a 20k yen price-tag and a $190 MSRP in USA.

The above demonstrates pretty conclusively that Nintendo does not even remotely rely on current exchange rates when pricing. The 100:1 ratio previously held seem to act as a maximum, and there is a willingness to lower the price for the US market most likely because hand-helds are not held in the same high regard. The price of $250 is a good guess, and likely represents the maximum amount they would conceivably charge.  It is realistic to expect the price to slip as low a $230 though, and $200 (while mostly wishful thinking) is not completely out of the realm of possibility.

Some points.

The US price point will be $250 (250 USD).

Nintendo prices in Japan tend to be the same as in the US with the decimal point moved two places to the left. In other words, regardless of the exact change rate, Nintendo likes to look at it as a 1:100 ratio. 

Also, Nintendo is not going to position its product to where it is the same price as a nearly full-featured console of its competitors. Nor would it be able to justify a price point jump of over 50% from its next product.

Now to make that pricepoint, Nintendo might have to change some things. This would include things such as including a charging plug rather than a charger unit -- while it sells the unit separately. Or it could drop the 2G card (a throw away item that costs a few bucks that most people would upgrade quickly anyway). 

Finally, for those waiting for a price drop before buying the 3DS -- How many price drops has the DSLite had? 

Mike from Morgantown

I would say that the issue is much more Pirating rather then hacking. But maybe i am wrong.

DS is not that close to $100 and you already got 3 which just proves that you would buy them at a higher price. Maybe not $250 but probably would start buying one at sub $200. :)