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Nintendo Slashes Profit Forecast and 3DS Price
Daetrin writes "Nintendo has announced a large loss for the first quarter of the year and lowered its annual profit forecast. In the three months prior to June 30th Nintendo lost 25.5 billion yen ($328 million) and the forecast is being reduced about 80%, from 110 billion yen ($1.4 billion) to 20 billion yen ($257 million). Nintendo is blaming poor sales of the 3DS and is responding by announcing a price cut from $250 to $170 on August 12. In order to mollify early adopters of the system Nintendo also announced that anyone who has logged into the Nintendo eShop before the price cut will receive 10 free NES games and 10 free GBA games. The GBA games won't be available until later in the year, but Nintendo claims they will be exclusive to the '3DS Ambassadors' and will not be available for purchase on the store in the future."
A related op-ed at Wired suggests the new price is still too high, given the rise of cheap portable games on various app stores.
I am still waiting for the 3DS lite to come out, the version with a bit better weight, a bit better screen, with a few good games already out, and on the top of that: Actually has a battery life.
Well, Nintendo do still have a gold cache from the Wii and the DS, so no worries.
And please lets pray that Reggie dies of cancer, because he is a horrible horrible figurehead.
So they're saying people don't want to buy multiple expensive devices instead of a single one that does everything to lug around?
"A related op-ed at Wired suggests the new price is still too high, given the rise of cheap portable games on various app stores."
When phones start having good gaming buttons and analog sticks, then I'll agree that Nintendo needs to worry. The current options for action/rpg game control on phones are horrible. I have yet to find one I can stand to play for more than 5 minutes. Even ones that -should- be good games... I just can't deal with the sloppy controls.
And there's a difference in length and quality between $1 cellphone games and $40 DS games as well. You expect something different from them.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
One of the prime target demographics for the Nintendo handheld consoles is children. Nintendo themselves have warned that children under 6 should not play 3D games, and adults should play for no more than 30 minutes at a time. Parents know that policing how long their kids play a portable video game system is not only undesirable, but nigh on impossible. The kind of parents who would spend hundreds of dollars on a toy for their kids are the same kind of parents who are going to be concerned when they hear reports that the toy may strain and damage the eyesight of their kids. It's a marketing nightmare for Nintendo.
On the list of exclusives there's Metroid Fusion, that's a pretty decent game that would have done well on Virtual Console I should think. It's a bit odd that they won't ever make it available to non-early adopters.
~Syberz
from time to time, I played this a little bit at the local target and just didn't find it all that compelling. Even 3D movies I have to watch normal ones first to really be able to follow the plot.
I wonder if all this 3D stuff is coming because of consumer demand (Costco is pushing the TVs pretty hard) or the manufacturers just shooting spitballs during the recession and hoping something sticks?
I always like new technology, but the last 3D I really like was the arcade game Time Traveler, and I'm not really sure if it was the quality or just neat factor since I was so young and don't have access to it anymore.
I have a feeling that the 3ds will gain a lot more support this fall/winter when all of the first party 3ds games start coming out. Half the reason I got one was because of the new kid icarus along with the new paper mario. The fact that it also can do netflix and browse the web now (couldn't until a recent update happened) should also help sales. I guess I'm glad I'll be getting a bunch of free games from their store which is nice, I just hope that it gets more popularity later this year.
It was pretty clear to parents and non-hardcore gamers that the DS was a significant upgrade in hardware and overall capabilities over the Advance. Not so much with the 3DS. With the $250 starting pricepoint, with Nintendo only selling the 3D gimmick (which by the trends with 3D movies, is wearing thin with the public) and the anemic game lineup...well, you can guess what happened.
The DS and Wii being the shovelware kings didn't help either. The only reason the Wii is still in first place on installed hardware units is because of the initial craze that surrounded the system before people discovered it had no (well, no good) games.
I wouldn't say that smartphones are stealing Nintendo's customers so much as they're a new set of customers that Nintendo is failing to court.
The 3DS has faced multiple big problems, including a lack of decent launch titles (Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D was delayed by MONTHS, but was originally supposed to be released at launch date), and poor release schedule by Nintendo of America. It's not really the marketing, it's the lack of support by Nintendo: there's currently no decent games, no incentive for third-party developers to create games, and the release schedule is very sparse. Imagine how much worse this will be when their flagship portable console has real competition, when the PS Vita is released.
http://mwc2011.t3.com/2011/02/sony-ericsson-xperia-play-hands-on-pictures-with-the-psp-phone/
is following the same fate as Nintendo's first generation 3D portable device.
One of the things that is really killing Nintendo is the insanely strong yen(near record highs vs. both the dollar and euro). Unlike Microsoft, and to a lesser extent Sony, Nintendo's costs are almost entirely in yen, their revenue almost entirely in euros and dollars. Obviously Nintendo is incredibly nonplussed about the yen, and will join a growing chorus of companies asking prime minister Kan to intervene. All those yen hoarders better take note, the intervention is going to happen sooner rather than later.
Monstar L
Why does slashdot keep citing sources that are behind a paywall? It's like they don't want us to check TFA.
No? So why should Nintendo be worried if they have a monopoly on a ton of popular franchises?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The 3DS is just a bad portable system. The whole 3D gimmick requires the system to remain still and in the right position. That means it's not usable on a bus. Or in the backseat of a moving car (especially if the road is at all bumpy). Or if you're just a bit fidgety and don't want to sit perfectly still for hours to play your games. Or are one of the many people who get eyestrain from it. As a result the 3D gimmick gets turned off and left off.
Without the gimmick, this thing isn't much more powerful then a regular DS, doesn't really do anything extra, has a fraction of the battery life, and costs more. Is it any wonder people aren't lining up to buy it?
Nintendo should really ditch the hardware business. They have the most successful game development house on the planet, they should just stick to that. Let someone else lose money making hardware.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
In a world where a $200 phone is smaller, lighter, already ubiquitous, and has games for $1 to $5, pricing a new mobile system at $250 seemed out of touch with reality. Plus, 3D seems like a gimmick, though admittedly I haven't tried a 3DS.
$170 is better than $250; however, the DSi XL currently retails for $170, so presumably that system will get a price cut as well, which may simply drive more customers to the cheaper system.
rooooar
It sounds like Game Over for them.
Celebrations of Nintendo's "win" of this generation's console with the Wii was always short-sighted, I think. Similar stories with the DS and 3DS. Sure, they make money with their hardware, good for them. But most of Sony and MS's revenue comes from actual games, licensing 3rd party titles, online content, etc. And in these areas, Nintendo has fallen WAY behind. Just imagine how much money MS must make each month from Xbox Live subscriptions alone. MS and Sony make money on a sold console for YEARS after the fact. Nintendo makes money on the initial sale of the console, but how much after that? They have always treated 3rd party developers like shit, and their first-party games only come out sporadically.
Now the 3DS is following the same Wii trend of shovelware games too, only no one is buying into the 3D gimmick like they bought into the Wii's motion control gimmick. Nintendo needs to bring their mentality into the 21st century if they want to make it. They need 3rd-party support and decent online gaming, not a price drop.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Even the ars tecnica article doesn't have the fulls list of games, it just lists a few from each list. Anyone know what they are?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the price point. (While this certainly didn't help)
The reason the 3DS is failing is because the lack of strong games, the launch titles were so weak it was sickening.
Odds are, this price drop isn't going to convince too many people to buy it because it STILL LACKS ANY GAMES.
And no, another re-release of Ocarina of Time does NOT count as a strong game.
I honestly think once all the games shown at E3 are released, you'll start seeing sales pick up. But until then, mine's a nice paperweight.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Nobody I've showed my 3DS to complains of headaches. They all thinks it's pretty cool.
The DS and Wii being the shovelware kings didn't help either.
I've read that there's far more shovelware on iPod touch than on DS. Is there even a practical way to fight shovelware?
As one of those early adopters, i have to say that i knew what i was getting into when i chose to wait in line to get my hands on a 3DS the first day. Anyone who does so without considering the possibility of an initially slow release schedule and possible price cuts is a fool. (Not to mention first run hardware bugs and in rare cases the possibility that the device will bomb in the market completely and be discontinued.)
And i, like many other people, was expecting that Nintendo was going to have to cut prices before the holiday season in order to compete effectively with the unexpectedly cheap Playstation Vita.
However i do have to admit that i wasn't expecting the price cuts to be this deep and this early. Maybe $250 was a little high, and $170 certainly doesn't seem like an unreasonable point for competing against the $250/$300 Vita, but it seems like perhaps two separate price cuts would have been in order. One down to $200 or $210 now, and then another price cut announced right before the release of the Vita.
But before too many other early adopters start complaining about how they're getting ripped off, remember that Sony had some pretty tough times in the early months (years?) of the PS3 launch, and at the time people were lambasting them for not cutting the price of the PS3. So which do you want? A company that responds when market conditions seem to warrant it, or one that sticks to the initial price point come hell or high water? (And all the trolls going on about how this means Nintendo is clearly doomed, note that Sony did eventually recover from those early problems. Nintendo certainly isn't out of the game yet.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Phone trumps Zelda I'm afraid.
Not for gamers too young to have a job, such as children in middle school or high school. They have no way to pay for a cellular voice contract. A salesperson I talked to in a Best Buy Mobile store told me that the carriers won't sell a data plan except bundled with a $40 per month or more expensive voice plan.
If you want Zelda on your phone, get an Android phone, the Nesoid emulator, and a Kazzo linker to dump your Game Pak.
a $200 phone
The only smartphones with game download stores that I know of in that price range without an expensive cellular service contract are Samsung Intercept and LG Optimus V (and their counterparts on other carriers). And those don't even have gamepads.
My problem is that most of the NES games they're offering for download I've arleady bought and paid for on my Wii.
This announcement implies that there will (still) be no way to transfer purchases back and forth between the platforms.
Why would I buy both the new 3DS platform and the right to redownload a game when I can just buy neither instead?
And it's not like I don't already own enough versions of the Ocarina of Time...
Some games retail in holland for about 50 euro's. That is just to fucking expensive for what is often a game only marginally better then iPhone stye games. Take ridge racer, it is a joke of a game but Nintendo expects to get full price for it. It just is to much.
Nintendo still thinks it is the only game in town but the smartphone market has broken the casual gaming market wide open. It better adjust. It ain't the hardware price, you can't even buy a decent phone for the price of 3DS but I can load an awful lot of mobile games for the price of 3DS catridge.
As for the zelda remake... that is the MUST have title? Come one, that should have been a freebee or a special bundle. If Nintendo was a sheepherder then it would not just kill the sheep for its wool, it would machine gun the entire herd to do a blood sampling. By all means, bleed me for every nickle I got but do you got to bugger me at the same time while dancing on my mothers grave?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Would have loved to get the 3DS as my first hand-held.
However, as American living in Europe, the region-lock of the 3DS is a complete show-stopper for me. Most games here are not available in English, but only in the local language.
I could use an american-bought 3DS in order to be able to play american-region games. But then I would also have to pay higher shipping and customs/import-tariffs each time I buy games from the US, would need a different charger for the 3DS and so on. All in all, too much hassle and a Well-Done, Nintendo! I'll probably go with the Sony PS Vita, which supposedly has no region-locking...
Then I found about the terms, and lost all interest.
With the kind of crap included in TOS the only way I would get one is if they paid me for it.
The Wii was a great marketing ploy from Nintendo, caching in on some long time nostalgia by releasing a platform that could access all old content (i.e. when Nintendo were kinds) and had the novel motion control mechanism. But Nintendo has done nothing since to innovate gaming and has gotten into a habit of basically ignoring the wants and needs from gamers and instead pushing fisher price like gaming titles and products. Nintendo lost me with Mario Galaxy, which was so sickly cute and utterly inane for the adult mind, I realized right then and there that Nintendo will never make a system or game that will appeal to adult gamers again. Recently looking at the release game line up of 3DS gaming titles, this was quite obvious.
While there may be a niche market for pre-school game systems, overall I think Nintendo's Wii will be the last big hurrah for Nintendo and they will slowly spiral down into oblivion. I mean, it had already started with the Gamecube (Nintendo poorest game system ever), but Wii staved the inevitable off for a few extra years. The WiiU is such a poor followup to the Wii that this trend of people losing interest in Nintendo will continue unabated.
I think there are some very arrogant figureheads running Nintendo, and unless they either swallow their pride or step down, I don't think Nintendo can recover. Flogging more childish Mario, Zelda and Metroid games is not going to make a company survive the next generation of game consoles, pissing off 3rd party developers with anemic game systems will ensure failure, and with added pressure and competition from cellphone markets, Nintendo doesn't have a clue how to compete in gaming.
Nintendo had a good run, but they are currently irrelevant in gaming for 90% of the gaming consumers out there.
In a more sensible world, all NES games would be in the public domain at this point.
Circumcision is child abuse.
And what is Zelda on the 3DS, a rehash. Off one of the oldest games. That will teach the likes of Halo or FF! Launch title, a re-release.
And there is a nasty voice in my head that Zelda is only the top franchise for Nintendo because everything else sucks even worse. A case of one-eye's claim to the throne.
Mind you, this is Nintendo, they do crap, good, crap. They screwed up with the 3DS, to expensive a console, to expensive games and the device an odd combo of features that never quite come together. The 3D effect itself is nice enough but putting games on it that require you to move the device itself to control it has to be one of the most dumb decisions in gaming history. And god knows there are a lot. And all of it on a device smaller then the DSi XL...
Maybe Nintendo felt sorry for Sony and wanted to give them an easy start with the PSP2.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
when you introduce a new and improved model every freaking year with little effort to back it up with software people start to loose interest, add on to the fact this thing is more or less what you already own but with a monstrous price tag and a half broken gimmick no one should really be surprised.
Galaxy Player
People on Slashdot have started mentioning this lately. I'll believe them once Samsung announces a U.S. release date.
Nintendo tried exactly that technique back in the Nintendo 64 era, but it still couldn't stop Superman.
If somebody were to figure out a way to sign their own code for the system, they could sell games without Ninsonysoft's approval.
That hasn't been clearly true for over a decade. In October 1998, both houses of the United States Congress approved the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by voice vote. One needs both the ability and the right.
Nintendo used many wonderful techniques to combat shovelware during the NES and SNES days. They worked wonderfully.
For one thing, Nintendo lost an antitrust lawsuit over this. For another, it didn't stop all shovelware: all but one of the games on this list of the bottom 20 carried the Official Nintendo Seal.
Just add 3d Porn that will boost sales...
Nintendo, is the iOS devices.
Before iOS you did not really have a choice except for going for Nintendo. Now on iOS despite the fact that there are no analog sticks etc... what you have is devices in the same pricerange and games starting around 50 cents and maxing at 10USD.
So as a parent it is clear on what to buy for the kids, definitely not a mobile console, where they can lose the cartridges with 45 USD each.
Before apples unplanned success in the gaming area (to some degree Apple still is not getting it that the games drive their sales big time, otherwise they would already would have opened the devices for gamepad like control options), Nintendo could always rely on their handhelds to carry them along no matter what desaster they had ahead in their normal console area.
This safety net now is gone, and Nintendo slowly is realizing it (hence the rants last year)