Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

[BurningPanther]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Like casual gamers to the hardcore, there are plenty more people into Angry Birds on their Droid than the diehards into Zelda on their 3DS, but so long as there are people seeking casual entertainment and people seeking something a little more profound (as if gaming were a religious experience), it's silly to argue either disappearing.

For my part, I'm in the camp preferring more depth to their games than the typical smartphone can (currently) offer, and it's for this reason I'm extremely glad for this price drop. I wasn't getting a 3DS unless.

[DakAttack]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Shit, maybe I'll pick one up.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Some interesting tidbits follow up this news:

- Yamauchi, former Nintendo prez, could be looking at a $300 million loss over the cut, he still owns 10% of Nintendo's shares.
- Iwata, like the class act he is, is taking a 50% paycut in light of the poor performance.
- On the bright side, Zelda OOT3D is a million seller

Some people (trolls) might downplay it because of the "lack of games" but I'm gonna say its because it still holds the same magic today it did 13 years ago. Because I don't think I'd be playing it the second time this year if that weren't true. I techincally support for platforms here in Wii, DS, 3DS and PS3, its not like I'm short on games to choose from here, but I choose to play this again despite my backlog.

Aonuma has posed a question to fans in Nintendo Power recently:

What do you want remade next: Majora's Mask or Wind Waker?

This has triggered fan response group Operation Moonfall (har har)- from a lot of people that would really like to see Majora's Mask first. Considering Nintendo could just contract Grezzo to handle the remakes like they have Zelda and Star Fox, it shouldn't really be a big deal. I'd think.

I wont both, but MM first - that one is my favorite.

I'm still waiting for these details on the free GBA games to roll out, though. I've been wanting downloadable GBA games since the DSi. I may need a bigger SD card soon.

[Armando]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Why would you even remake Wind Waker? The game still looks fantastic and if you really want to have a graphics fapfest you can just use Dolphin to increase the resolution to 1080p. As great as the 3DS is, 480p is still better than the 3DS's 400x240 resolution. I haven't even played Majora's Mask and this is a no-brainer to me. The only way I would accept a Wind Waker port is if they include the dungeons they cut out due to time constraints and replaced with a literal fetch quest.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Why would you even remake Wind Waker? The game still looks fantastic and if you really want to have a graphics fapfest you can just use Dolphin to increase the resolution to 1080p. As great as the 3DS is, 480p is still better than the 3DS's 400x240 resolution. I haven't even played Majora's Mask and this is a no-brainer to me. The only way I would accept a Wind Waker port is if they include the dungeons they cut out due to time constraints and replaced with a literal fetch quest.

Could be they end up doing MM for 3DS and save Wind Waker for a Wii U Virtual Console entry.

Though I could do without the blurring of those islands off in the distance for a proper draw distance instead. Its sort of ugly on an HD set, even if the rest of the game looks fine in 480p. I doubt they'd really do much to Wind Waker, honestly, I think WW had enough hidden dungeons and sidquests to eliminate the need for extra dungeons.

Remember, Twilight Princess's failing was really that the dungeons were too plentiful and the overworld was spread really thin on ideas. TP was the first time I groaned over the fact there were still two dungeons left. I'm supposed to get excited about those. People were insisting OOT3D needed a bonus dungeon like Zelda DX did but OOT was also spreading some ideas thin in terms of tools considering they were split between Kid Link and Teen Link. And what's a new dungeon without new tools? Could change how the game was played and its best to preserve the original experience.

DX's extra dungeon didn't really change all that much.

As for Majora's Mask, you need to go play that now. It only has four main dungeons, but trust me, they're more than enough considering they're easily the most mindbending of the series.

[Armando]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Though I could do without the blurring of those islands off in the distance for a proper draw distance instead. Its sort of ugly on an HD set, even if the rest of the game looks fine in 480p. I doubt they'd really do much to Wind Waker, honestly, I think WW had enough hidden dungeons and sidquests to eliminate the need for extra dungeons.

Remember, Twilight Princess's failing was really that the dungeons were too plentiful and the overworld was spread really thin on ideas. TP was the first time I groaned over the fact there were still two dungeons left. I'm supposed to get excited about those.

That may be so, but that fetch quest totally ruined the game's momentum and was ultimately much more frustrating to me. You know you're practically at the end and you're finally gonna get to kick Ganon's ass but they cockblock you by making you sail all over the overworld with limited clues. The timing was just bad. Putting the McGuffin back together didn't take a trivial amount of time the first time around. If I'm gonna lose 3-4 hours of my life anyways I'd much rather be doing it by putting the Master Sword to good use.

It just didn't feel right, kind of like Xenogears disc 2.

As for Majora's Mask, you need to go play that now.

Might as well wait for the port.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

I had half of the triforce shards well before the end of the game.

Its all in how you pushed yourself to play it. Some people made exploring the ocean an collecting charts a priority, other people made dungeons a priority.

Metroid Prime did the same thing and it was far more guilty of forcing you to wait until near the end to find the various relics. While the clues were all there early on, you didn't have all the tools needed to get to some of them until finishing the boss before Ridley and Prime. Wind Waker had fewer stopgaps on Triforce Charts.

[Armando]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Maybe I'm just bitter I got stuck on one or two of them. I still insist the timing on it was horrid even if Metroid Prime does it too. If the fetch quest had been just after Tower of the Gods I wouldn't have minded nearly as much, because it would've served as a break between dungeons and it wouldn't interrupt the flow of the game after the last dungeon before Ganon's Tower. They could've worked it into the plot simply by saying you needed it to enter the other temples.

Another thing to consider is that Metroid games are all exploration anyways. There isn't a clear distinction between what counts as a dungeon and what counts as just "overworld" - going on a fetch quest in Metroid doesn't feel like you just got shafted out of a proper dungeon. You also knew ahead of time that fetch quest was coming, you were mentally prepared for the fact that you weren't beating the game 'til you got that done. The WW fetch quest cockblocks you at the last moment.

[Cheezeman3000]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

My main issue with the WW fetch quest was how damn expensive the maps were to find the pieces. The best way to go about it was to save the large rupee chests until near the end, but most normal players wouldn't know to do that of course. And the game makes it take too long to travel to each of the sectors. They could've used a 'rocket pack' item that doubled your ocean speed or something.

[Malacite]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Iwata taking 50% pay cut over 3DS performance | Joystiq

Nintendo is dropping the price of the 3DS next month. In addition, the company has announced plans to institute a price cut on president Satoru Iwata. At a conference in Tokyo, Iwata told investors that he was taking responsibility for the 3DS's slow sales, along with a 50 percent reduction in pay as a result.

Iwata's last annual compensation was ¥137 million, or $1.8 million (including salary and performance-based "variable compensation"). He didn't announce specifics of the cut, but we can expect both the base salary and the bonus to be lower, since lower performance is the whole reason for this exercise. Other "representative directors," including Senior Managing Directors Shigeru Miyamoto and Shinji Hatano, will take 30 percent pay cuts, and other execs will lose 20 percent off their salaries.

Analyst David Gibson tweeted from the conference that Nintendo cited a missed opportunity to cut the GameCube's price as motivation to jump on the 3DS price cut.

Wow, props to Iwata san. That's pretty much the exact opposite mentality of western corporations & their CEOs.

[Firewind]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Nintendo 3DS goes $169, old customers get 20 free oldies -Destructoid

So things haven't been going smoothly for 3DS. I haven't really seen what all the complaints were about, but Nintendo seems to have taken it to heart. While I did expect 3DS to see a price drop before Vita's launch, I wasn't expecting it by $80.

Yep, seems this happens sometime in August.

But if you paid the $250 launch price, they are offering free games and lots of them for your purchase. How does twenty games sound?

Ten of them will be NES classics available to adopters new and old, but exclusive to early adopters will be ten Game Boy Advance games. And not just any GBA games, some of the good stuff.

Mentioned GBA games include:

Mario Kart Super Circut
Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi's Island
WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames
Metroid Fusion
Mario Vs. Donkey Kong

These and five others will be made available exclusively to early adopters in the months to come. After the early adopters have had their go, they will later be released for sale on 3DS eShop.

I'm not going to complain. Not one bit. That's some damn good damage control going on, even better than what PSN offered over its outage - which people really had a right to complain about.

There's five more to be announced, but if the initial five are any indication, its good stuff.

I just like that GBA games are now finally confirmed to be happening and happening soon. So, SE, get on thet FFVI GBA VC port plz.

Why do I see this offer being only for the US and Japan like every other thing Nintendo do?

And knocking $80 off the price really isn't doing to dent the price of the thing in the UK either. $80 is £49 off the already hefty £250 ($410) price tag is still going to mean we're paying $330 in the UK for something that can be imported from the US for $170 plus shipping. Prices for 3DS units in mainland Europe are a little less but still ludicrously high compared to what the US and Japan pay.

The whole thing is really only to shift units in Japan while pretty much the entire continent of Europe gets shafted again (the 3DS being region locked DID have an impact on sales here, people either imported an American 3DS at great expense or just preordered a PS Vita). The price drops needs to be more significant if they want to see global sales pick up. Disappointing launch titles aren't really much of a reason to blame a slump in sales; everyone knows that you only buy a console at launch for bragging rights (I did the same with the PSP). One of the issues is as mentioned earlier in the thread: Smartphones are taking over the mobile gaming market due to them:

1) Appealing to the casual gamer.
2) Being much cheaper than a 3DS (especially in Europe).
3) Have games that are far, far cheaper.
4) They pull in the hardcore gamer crowd by being ridiculously easy to hack to run emulators.
5) The average person does like to have "an all in one" device.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Two more Ambassador GBA games were mentioned:

Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 (hopefully it includes the eReader bonuses)
Kirby and the Amazing Mirror

[Malacite]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Am I the only one here who really wanted to like MM, but just ended up hating the shit out of it?


The constant going back in time every 3 days just drove me nuts.

[Armando]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 (hopefully it includes the eReader bonuses)

If it has the eReader bonuses, it's time for people to get hyped.

That's the closest thing to Super Mario Bros X you're ever going to find in an official Mario game.

[Kailea]

Re: Nintendo 3DS to see $80 price drop, rewards early adopters

oh wow I did not know that the E-reader did all that for SMB3 GBA..... is there a rom file to play this on an emulator?.....mmmmm