3DS price drop, free games for early adopters!
- Thread starter Tyeforce
- Start date
Retailers selling a game early is a lot different than retailers selling a system at a new price early. The registers will not ring up at the new price until the day of the price drop. There's no way to "get one early", because it's the same item that's been available, just at a different price.
And I know Vita's more powerful, but so was the PSP. Now we're back to the same exact situation; Sony has a more powerful, yet more expensive system, and Nintendo has a less powerful, yet less expensive system. Which one exploded and which one was left in the dust?
Yeah, I honestly believed that. And so did many other people. This price drop, while not completely unexpected after Vita's price announcement and the 3DS selling a bit slower than Nintendo hoped, was a shock, and very unlike Nintendo. But I'm not complaining!
I don't remember saying that at all, lol. And no, a price drop doesn't always mean that something's right around the corner. Look how many times they dropped the Wii's price, yet we never got the Wii HD that everyone was so sure would happen.
Nintendo made a mistake by thinking that they could sell the 3DS at a premium price and still have it fly off shelves like the DS. But they were wrong, and that's why we're seeing this price cut. Even with a lot of new games coming out this holiday season, it would've still been tough to sell the 3DS at $250, especially with Vita coming up at the same price.
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Psychonaut
Senior Member
the nintendo ds and the sony psp were completely different approaches to catering to different customers.
from the get-go, the psp had a large emphasis on the memory stick, especially with the hombrew/custom firmware community. past that, it still functions well as both a media player and game system. this is where sony is going with their consoles, which is vastly different from nintendo's approach to having dedicated game consoles with new features to gaming at a more affordable price than the competition.
unless there's a person waiting in-store to push a button/flick a switch changing the price, they're going to change the price earlier or later. i think you know that stores can sell their inventory at whatever price they like, MSRP is only that, recommended pricing. if they drop their price sooner rather than later, it's only the store's loss.
@ making a mistake of selling the 3ds at a premium price, i would totally agree that the pricing on it is balls on face stupid for what it is; a ds with a gyroscope, neat-o 3d screen, a bit more power, and a new firmware update. but i'm a bit biased.
Yes, I know it's entirely possible for retailers to drop the price if they want to, but they never will. Even when they do drop the price of a console, it's always just a temporary sale, not a permanent price drop. (Keep in mind this is about the U.S. only, I don't know much about how retailers work in places like Europe.)
And while we can agree that $250 was too high of a price, I don't regret my purchase one bit. A lot of that probably is because I'm going to buy a new Nintendo system regardless of the cost because I know there will always be games that I like coming out for it, but I still feel that my 3DS has definitely been worth the $250 I spent for it. Plus I'm getting 20 games, a well over $150 value, for free now. Can't complain about that.
Dimitri Petrenko
Get on the point maggots!
God dammit i wanted to get the free games while i was on holiday in america
My plan was to buy a ds before the price drop (august 5-8th) then get the 20 virtual console games to play when im my hotel room and have nothign to do but know i read this again i noticed it said sept 1st is when we get the games, thats after when i get back home.
My plan was to buy a ds before the price drop (august 5-8th) then get the 20 virtual console games to play when im my hotel room and have nothign to do but know i read this again i noticed it said sept 1st is when we get the games, thats after when i get back home.
You could still get the free games. As long as you connect to the eShop before August 12th, you'll be able to download the games for free when they become available. Your location shouldn't matter, because the Ambassador program is worldwide, and even if you have a 3DS from a different region, you can still access that region's eShop.
They're not gonna give us a Pok?mon game. At least not a main series Pok?mon game. What would the point of that be, anyway? If they did, they're not going to give us two versions, so we'd only get one version (Pok?mon Ruby, Pok?mon FireRed, Pok?mon Emerald), but we'd never be able to catch all the Pok?mon with just one version! Main series Pok?mon games just don't work for Virtual Console. We could get Pok?mon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire, though!
Fire Emblem would be great! I've always wanted to play a Fire Emblem game, but I've never really had the motivation to pick one up and start playing it. I actually did buy Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon for DS, but I haven't even played it yet, lol. But if Nintendo gave me a free download of Fire Emblem right on my 3DS, I'd have the motivation to play it!
Psychonaut
Senior Member
how can you say they never will?
that is essentially the same as saying they'll never release a game early.
some retailers just know jack **** about their merchandise, and put it out whenever they get it. if they hear that the console is selling for less soon, they might do it sooner than that on accident, which is when you strike.
20 games = $150 value.. but you already own the games on a gba cart, most likely.. (i own all the gba ones listed, as i've already said, and nes games = rofl)
so basically, this is a very tempting offer since the word free is plastered all over it, but i still can't make the purchase.. sensible. i gain nothing out of buying a 3ds, realistically. i get the ability to play gba games on a handheld i don't like.. and the ability to buy some games, if any ever come out..
and again, the stores will more likely than not screw up and change their pricing sooner or later than the msrp's change date, which is when i would plan to buy it and proceed to buy new things.
or, again, wait for the 3ds lite/i/upgrade, and just buy that. meh.
They have -- they actually pioneered the strategy in the NES days, and sold the Gamecube at a loss briefly while it was at $99.
Again, selling a game early is very different from selling a system at a new price early. When retailers sell games early, it's not a decision that the store has made. It's just some dumb employee who put the game out early because he/she didn't check the street date. Price drops, on the other hand, are a conscious decision made by corporate, and it's not something that an employee can goof up, because it's all tied to the store's database. And it's much more serious than letting a game slip out early. If a store sells a game early, they're still getting money from it. If they cut the price on something too low, they're gonna lose money. Nintendo is still supplying 3DS systems to retails for the MSRP of $250 (the stores buy the systems from Nintendo for slightly less than that, of course, so they can make a profit). If a retailer drops the price to $169.99 before Nintendo sells them the systems at the lower price, they're just going to be losing money.
And, again, don't count on a 3DS Lite or whatever. Nintendo just lost a ton of money, and they'll be losing even more when they start selling the 3DS for a loss, so what makes you think they're going to spend money and resources on a new model? Plus it's been said many times that they designed the 3DS with no revisions in mind. With the 3DS, Nintendo is pushing software updates as opposed to hardware updates.
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