Nintendo: 3DS Price Drop Came From Gamecube Lessons
It has loads of money to do this!
Nintendo's sudden 3DS price drop caused lots of heads to turn last week. Why was this seemingly uncharacteristic move made without so much as a warning? Well, hold on to your alarmist pants, because CEO Satoru Iwata says that everything's aaaallllright.
The decision for the price drop was down to lessons learned from the past, Iwata explained during an investor Q&A session. Specifically with the Gamecube, where he felt that Nintendo "had a chance that [it] did not utilise." It's not quite clear what he's referring to here by this report from Andriasang, but we imagine it would have been a chance to aggressively market the console.
Looking back, it was a feeling that the whole of Nintendo's management shared, Iwata noted. He added that the company was able to cut the price of the 3DS so soon after launch thanks to all the money that it printed with the sales of Wii and DS systems.
So the iPhone and the increasing popularity of the mobile and social gaming market would have nothing to do with it, then? No, of course not. Obviously.
The decision for the price drop was down to lessons learned from the past, Iwata explained during an investor Q&A session. Specifically with the Gamecube, where he felt that Nintendo "had a chance that [it] did not utilise." It's not quite clear what he's referring to here by this report from Andriasang, but we imagine it would have been a chance to aggressively market the console.
Looking back, it was a feeling that the whole of Nintendo's management shared, Iwata noted. He added that the company was able to cut the price of the 3DS so soon after launch thanks to all the money that it printed with the sales of Wii and DS systems.
So the iPhone and the increasing popularity of the mobile and social gaming market would have nothing to do with it, then? No, of course not. Obviously.
Companies:
Nintendo
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Comments
epobirs 1 Aug 2011 16:19
1/1
I believe what he meant was that the GameCube had a huge cost advantage over the PS2 and Xbox, as became obvious later when Nintendo dropped the price to $99 without any major engineering revisions. While the GameCube launched at a lower price than its competitors, Nintendo could have pushed the cost of entry advantage much harder instead of seeking to profit from the hardware rather than solely from the software and accessories.