Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told investors and the media at a recent investor briefing that the company had no plans to further cut the sticker price of its struggling 3DS hand-held. You may recall that last week Iwata apologized to investors after the company revealed a massive loss last week. Iwata said that the decision to cut the price of the 3DS was to garner interest in the system and bring it back to profitability.
"During the fiscal year ending March 2013, we are expecting the profitability of Nintendo 3DS hardware to improve significantly," he said. "As long as we can create sufficient momentum, I think we will be able to come close to our usual course of business operations in the next fiscal year."
Iwata also said that the company was holding back some finished 3DS software titles to avoid limiting the positive financial impact during the holiday shopping season.
"Video games need to stay fresh, so it is not practical for us to put them on hold for too long, but we think that some of them may be held for a certain amount of time so that there will be a short interval between when they are completed and when they are launched," he said.
Iwata also said that software releases for the holiday season would be "dense." For this reason the company "intentionally delayed the launch of some software titles to early next year."
Following the holiday releases of Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7, Nintendo will release Kid Icarus: Uprising, Luigi's Mansion 2, Paper Mario and Animal Crossing 3DS titles some time in the next year.
Fans are probably not too delighted to hear that Nintendo is intentionally holding back titles for 3DS, but maybe investors understand it better than the average consumer...
Source: Gamasutra
Comments
Re: Nintendo Holding Back Some 3DS Titles for Next Year
I understand their reasoning. You don't want to release a lighter game against the likes of a Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed, but all the same, it's worth noting that the 3DS is bombing so badly because there are no games to keep people interested in it. The releases they have on both the 3DS and the DS are trickling out and the Wii is pretty much dead except for the new Zelda game.. Nintendo is reeling over titantic losses, but when people beg them to releases games for their systems, they say that they have no plans on releasing them.
The problem isn't the games, the market, or the hardware. It's Nintendo. They seem to enjoy shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly, it seems.
Re: Nintendo Holding Back Some 3DS Titles for Next Year
It's really a simple matter of not letting their software get lost in the holiday shuffle, and trying to keep their titles from cannibalizing one another's sales. The Mario titles are strong enough to stand by themselves during the holiday season, but Kid Icarus, Paper Mario, and the others (which are very important titles toward proving the 3DS's viability) need a more open field to succeed. I honestly don't mind the wait if it means my system doesn't wind up becoming another Virtual Boy.