Thursday, July 28, 2011

3DS price drop and Mario 3ds games release dates

Great Price, Great Games

An exciting message for people who own a Nintendo 3DS and those who want to:

Nintendo of America today announced plans to drop the suggested retail price of its portable Nintendo 3DS™ system to $169.99 in the United States. The new price takes effect Aug. 12 and makes an outstanding value even better.

Building on the popularity of The Legend of Zelda™: Ocarina of Time™ 3D, which launched June 19, the upcoming game calendar for Nintendo 3DS is a Who's Who of iconic video game franchises. Star Fox 64™ 3D arrives on Sept. 9, followed by Super Mario™ 3D Land in November, Mario Kart™ 7 in December and Kid Icarus™: Uprising during the holiday season.

And don't forget that Nintendo 3DS has a bunch of fun features, including Nintendo Video™, the Nintendo eShop and access to Netflix, that make it a must-have video game system.

But what about the 830,000 of you who already own a Nintendo 3DS? You're some of Nintendo's most loyal customers, and we're rewarding you for getting in on the action early with not one, not 10, but 20 free downloadable games from the Nintendo eShop! Here's how it works:

The 20 free games are available to anyone who owns a Nintendo 3DS system and uses a wireless broadband Internet signal to connect to the Nintendo eShop at least once before 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Aug. 11. These users will automatically be registered in the Nintendo 3DS Ambassador program. The program contains two elements:

1. Starting Sept. 1, Nintendo 3DS Ambassadors will be able to download 10 NES™ Virtual Console™ games at no charge and before they are available in the Nintendo eShop to the general public. These games, including Super Mario Bros.™, Donkey Kong Jr.™, Balloon Fight™, Ice Climber™ and The Legend of Zelda™, are slated to become paid downloadable games, but Ambassadors get them early for free. Once the paid versions of the games are posted to the Nintendo eShop later in the year, the updated versions will be available to Ambassadors for download at no cost.

2. By the end of 2011, Nintendo will provide Ambassadors with 10 Game Boy Advance Virtual Console games. These include games like Yoshi's Island™: Super Mario™ Advance 3, Mario Kart™: Super Circuit, Metroid™ Fusion, WarioWare™, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ and Mario vs. Donkey Kong™. These games will be available exclusively to Ambassadors, and Nintendo currently has no plans to make these 10 games available to the general public on the Nintendo 3DS in the future.

More details about this program will be announced in the future.

It's a great time to own a Nintendo 3DS!

--Your Friends at Nintendo of America

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My thoughts on this is it is a good idea for Nintendo and consumers. It helps out Nintendo by getting more systems sold so more games can come to the 3DS. For consumers the 20 games for free is a great thing for those that may have not gotten the 3DS. I probably won't have the money to get one before the August 11th date so I will likely get one from the price drop sometime this year.
So is this making you want to pick up a 3DS soon if you haven't already? For those that have one already are these 20 games for free enough to take the early adoption of the 3DS?

6 comments:

Greg Meyer said...

I'm psyched about the announcement. Nintendo's making the right decision to drop the price now and encouraging people to pick up the system. As for the free games, that just sweetens the deal for me. I might not play all 20 games, but they're nice to have. The list for both systems so far is looking nice. I'm just hoping one of the ten free NES games isn't Urban Champion.

NinSage said...

This news is like an early Christmas gift for me.

Almost literally ... since it assures that I will have a 3DS by December 25th ^_^

Great move, Nintendo!!

Mop_it_up said...

I still think Nintendo should have held off until after the holidays before dropping the price. But that's because I think that the lack of compelling software was the biggest reason for slow 3DS sales rather than the price. Once games like Super Mario 3D hit then it would have taken off. But now we'll never know if that's the case since the price will be a lot lower at that point.

Nintendo's definitely in a tough spot and neither option is really desirable. Though if I'm right about the 3DS needing software, then the possible negative image from cutting the price so heftily shouldn't be much of a factor. People are going to buy a 3DS if it has the games they want to play.

I'm a little upset by this, since I was banking on there not being a price cut for at least a year and bought one to prepare for the upcoming releases and don't currently have any 3DS games. I bought mine based on the upcoming games, which wasn't a good idea obviously. That's why I feel a little slighted, since I haven't been using it to play anything I couldn't have with a DS. I didn't anticipate a price drop but I also didn't realize just how poor sales really were; I knew they were slow but I thought it had at least reached one million. Though it was kind of an impulse purchase and that means it was dangerous anyway since I didn't think about it for very long. I had planned to buy a DS Lite but then I started thinking about it and it seemed a little strange if I was just going to buy a 3DS in six months, so I justified the high 3DS price by considering it two systems in one. Now, I could have gotten a DS Lite and a 3DS for only $20 more than just a 3DS, so it didn't work out for me.

Of the ten titles revealed that they are offering, I own all but two of them, and there's a reason I don't own those other two. The ten yet to be revealed are likely to be mostly games I own as well, since I'm a Nintendo fan and therefore I own most of their games. I'd much rather have gotten some eShop credit, and not $80 but rather even $40 would have been much better for me than what they are offering.

Oh well, I learned my lesson.

NinSage said...

Yo, Kathrine, I'm level grinding my "white mage" for Echoes of Time on this Chicago trip.

So we better play a lot when I get back! Know anyone else with the game??

EV said...

It HAS eclipsed 1 million, by a large margin. I don't know where that 830,000 number is coming from, maybe North American sales.

Anyways I'll still probably be late to the party. I likely won't get one this year as Tales of the Abyss is really the only thing on my radar.

Maxi said...

I think that number EV is for North America sales. I myself probably will get one after the price drop. I think Kathrine has it. There is some solid titles for the 3DS but there isn't as many as there should be.