3DS price drop to $169.99?

Wow! Today is the first day of the Walmart price rollback, and Future Shop & Best Buy also have the 3DS on sale for about the same price.

But Destructoid is reporting that Nintendo plans to reduce the 3DS price to $169.99 on August 12, 2011! Holy cow, if that's true, that's a fairly steep price drop. And it's not confirmed for Canada yet... but it BETTER be, know what I'm sayin'....

For early adopters (like me) who paid $250.00, Nintendo is offering a bundle of download eShop games. from the Destructoid article:

So they're going to give everybody who bought a 3DS prior to this point the opportunity to download a collection of 10 NES games for free before they hit the eShop. They'll also be giving out ten Game Boy Advance titles, including Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ and Mario vs. Donkey Kong, before the end of the year. These GBA games are currently expected to be exclusive to early adopters or, as Nintendo calls them, "Ambassadors."

All things considered, if I had a choice I'd probably pick the lower price rather than the bundle games. But at least Nintendo is giving us early adopters something. And a lot of those games seem good. Compare that to Sony and their horrible treatment of PSPgo early adopters-- hell, PSPgo buyers in general-- and at least Nintendo shows some customer support.

It will be interesting to see if this price cut is really happening, the gamble is that August 12 is well after the $199 sale price period of Walmart/Best Buy/ Future Shop. but at least in the case of Best Buy & Future Shop, they offer 30 day price protection. So buyers could get it now and get the price difference if the price drops in August.

I'm glad that Nintendo is responding to the lukewarm reception of the 3DS, but gotta wonder if the system is in trouble. This does remind me a lot of the PSPgo fiasco, but accelerated.

However, a bold move like this by Nintendo might give the 3DS enough of a boost to weather the slow period until some big games come out to keep it afloat. We'll see.



later
don