StarBP said:
Correct. I do think they will do a price drop to $200 in 4Q 2011 or 1Q 2012, but overall this system does NOT go against Nintendo's most recent (DS-era and beyond) philosophy. Namely, to create systems that are truly innovative and not just graphical rehashes of the previous system. Of course, they are still following their original philosophy as well, which is to sell good hardware with good software.
However, I believe that Nintendo has a third philosophy that they have been desparately wanting to follow, without much success outside of Japan. That is the social aspect that you mention. You see, in Japan it is a common sight to see someone playing on their DS. For a comparison think America (or UK, or Canada, or whatever country you live in) in 1999, when Pokémon was huge. People brought their Game Boys and Link Cables everywhere. By percentage of the population, Pokémon is bigger in Japan NOW than it was in America THEN, and many people take their DS's everywhere they go. ONLY Nintendo games have cracked 5 million (incidentally, all 5 first-sets of Pokémon games are in that list of 9 games). All but one of them (Super Mario Bros.) is a portable game. Looking past these top 9, similar trends show up, but not as extreme (3/4 of the top 25 are Nintendo-made, and 2/3 are portable).
The entire reason that Pokémon spread so fast was just that: it spread. It was a very good game in and of itself (if it was bad it would have never taken off), but what set it apart was that the game itself served as its own advertising. Satoshi Tajiri, in my opinion the best marketing genius of our generation, produced two versions of the game, both essentially the same. In order to complete the Pokédex and catch 'em all, you had to trade with other players. Many people would take their Game Boys with them places to find people to trade with. This, in addition to Tajiri's secret addition of a 151st Pokémon, caused the series to skyrocket... it was viral marketing at its finest, and it was what caused Nintendo to not scrap the Game Boy series.
It would be nearly 15 years before Nintendo would try something like that again. Enter a fine specimen of gaming excellence called the 3DS. The StreetPass feature of this revolutionary system is Nintendo's latest attempt at viral marketing. In Nintendo's own words, "people really have to see [the 3DS] to believe it". Packaged with the system are two games: "StreetPass Quest" and "StreetPass Puzzle". StreetPass Quest is a turn-based combat game in which you have to recruit Miis from people you have passed to rescue a king. By completing levels, you can collect and win hats for your Miis. In StreetPass Puzzle, every time you pass somebody, you receive a piece of a Nintendo-themed puzzle. Complete the puzzle and you can look at 3D models of the characters in the puzzle. Hmmm... collections, checklist, social interaction with your portable game system required to complete the list, turn-based RPG... sound familiar? In my opinion the 3DS will become a huge sensation before the end of 2011. It just needs to sell some more before it can sell a LOT more.
Oh, and the 3DS probably won't be the only thing that becomes huge... surely the games will do well due to better presence... people who have the 3DS in their pockets may actually take it OUT of their pocket and INTO their hands... and not just in Japan, where such activity is already common. The games that will do especially well are those which take the most advantage of such interactions. In conclusion, I would not be surprised at all if a pair of nearly identical games released around 2013 for the 3DS becomes the first non-bundle game to surpass 15 million sales in North America. Note that non-bundle refers only to games which have never been bundled with any system or key accessory which sells for $10 or more by itself (note that the top 8 are all bundle games by that definition... the current top non-bundle game in America is Pokémon Red/Blue, with 11.44m sales).
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Pixel Art can be fun.
