3DS being dumped locally for $129

Steel Diver is a very smart and enjoyable game.


But Nintendo never makes original IPs... :banghead:


3DS will be fine. Chances are, it will outsell the Vita as bad as the DS outsold the PSP. There's a Smash Bros. game coming to it, a new Zelda coming to it, it has a Mario, and this week it gets a Mario Kart.

That's all Nintendo has to do to make something sell.

 

Look at how many units it has sold- it isn't a flop.

Prices are erratic here in the UK. BP Petrol stations are selling them at £99! Random- I'd drive to a nearby town and get one but I think santa has plans for me.
I didn't want one- but then I realised a turn based Paper Mario is in the pipeline..!

 

The Gamecube

 

Really? The Gamecube was a financial failure? The Gamecube left Nintendo on the ropes, a breath away from turning into Sega?

I've always been astounded when people claim the GC or the N64 were failures. They weren't Nintendo's biggest sellers, but they were still both successful systems.

 

The GC wasn't exactly a failure, but like the PSP, it's hard to really call it a success either when it was so far behind the competition (mainly the PS2). Plus, it seemed to practically die off about a year before even the Xbox did and there was absolutely zero hype for its release either...

 

Nintendo went from being the first in the world, to dead last in just over a decade. If that's not failure I'm not sure what is.

-adrianc

 

Dead last in what? I'd say that after the SNES they started to slide but while they didn't remain dominant they have never really been in a bad spot. Sure the Virtual Boy was a fuckup but they shoved that thing in an early grave and other than that they kept on trucking. While the N64 didn't own its generation market share wise, the Gameboy(Color) and Pokemon were huge successes during that time. During the GameCube while again it did not carve out a big market share, it had popular titles exclusive to it and the Gameboy Advance and later DS were both great successes. The Wii while not a success in the hardcore gamers sense, has been a financial success for sure. The 3DS while it had a rough start, is likely to also be a success and probably will be both gaming wise and financially.

While it is disappointing that Nintendo isn't the main console you own with all the great games on it, those days are long past anyway. I can understand with the NES and SNES that many people only owned either a Sega or Nintendo console. Maybe a Turbografx. But these days many people just do what makes sense and they own more than one console or all the consoles.

 

Benchmarking against other consoles isn't the best way to measure sales success, especially with the GCN and PS2. Nintendo was making a profit on the GCN from day one and so they didn't *need* to sell as many units as Sony did. I'm sure they wish they'd sold more, but they still made plenty of money on the console.

 

Software sales were also lower than the PS2's. Or how about the fact that the GC was practically dead at the end of 2004 due to being abandoned by third parties en masse, while the PS2 still went strong for a couple more years?

 

I'm not arguing that the GCN was MORE successful than the PS2 was, that would be idiotic.

I'm saying that it was successful enough. It doesn't need to be #1, Nintendo just needs to make enough of a profit to be worth their while.

Generally, their business model is to make money on hardware and on 1st party software, and then to leverage the installed base created by demand for 1st party software to also sell some third party stuff and earn fees, but this isn't where they're making MOST of their money, unlike Sony/Microsoft.

 

I'm sorry, are you basing how successful a Nintendo system is on its third party support?


'Cuz there's this system called the "Wii" I'd like to tell you about...

 

Much like pre-orders for Gran Turismo portable. That title got put off for years and years, and got released way too late.

It might happen it might not, it was announced for the DS at the beginning, but got scrapped for some stupid reason.. Maybe they knew the DS wasn't powerful enough.

 

Best Buy is offering a 50$ gift card when you buy a 3DS so 169 - 50, 119 not bad.

 

No, the other way around. Third parties abandoned the GC leaving it for dead because it wasn't successful enough.

 

Third parties are also not putting as much support behind the Wii because their games don't sell.


I mean Jesus dude, ever since the N64 it's been the case that it's primarily 1st party software that sales on Nintendo machines.

 

Yeah...and the N64 was also the first time Nintendo fell behind the competition. Coincidence? I think not.

 

well anyway, again I have yet to see any instances of 3DS systems being sold for anything less than $169.99 in my area.
Sad to say, it seems to be picking up some momentum as of late. Still nothing I would buy, but just saying.

 

Did Nintendo make money during the N64 era?
Yes.
Did Nintendo make money during the Gamecube era?
Yes.
Does Microsoft consider the Xbox360 a failure because it didn't sell as well as the Wii?
No.
Does Sony consider the PSP/PS3 failures since they didn't sell as well as the DS/Wii?
No.


Ergo, calling the Gamecube a flat out failure is just silly.

 

The gamecube and the xbox 1 were the real rivals during their time of release since they were technically next gen compared to the ps2. Whats interesting is that the xbox 1 was the dominant system sales wise and what people were playing but classic game wise the gamecube had the stronger library. There are more people going back and playing GC games than xbox 1 games. So while xbox won the battle, the war (as in being remembered) goes to the GC.

funny thing heard at gamestop today in the 3ds section, next to a demo unit
guy "This is the new 3DS its got that dual screen!"
girl "Are you sure its the new one, it looks really beat up!"

 

If you want to compare Xbox 1 and GC, while people may perceive Xbox as more successful I'm pretty sure it never made Microsoft any profits where as the GameCube did.