Nintendo has not been pleased with how its new 3DS has been selling. After launching the handheld in late March, the company was forced to make a sudden price cut of $80 in an attempt to reignite sales. There's also been a lot of pressure to lower prices on 3DS software. The bottom line, however, is that Nintendo failed to bring out its big guns at launch.
"Certainly, we needed to have stronger support at the launch from a first-party perspective."
The company acknowledged this failing in a recent interview with USA Today. "We needed to have key franchises and stronger first-party titles," said Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime, reflecting on what went wrong for the 3DS launch.
Nintendogs + Cats is a nice title, but it's no system seller and 3DS should have had a Mario or Zelda. We're not in the habit of saying "we told you so," but we highlighted this very problem back in May when it was already clear that 3DS wasn't flying off shelves. Hopefully Nintendo won't make the same mistake with Wii U when that console launches in 2012.
As for the future of 3DS, Fils-Aime is optimistic that Nintendo can regain momentum. "This is really about reinvigorating the Nintendo 3DS momentum and having that … power through all during the key holiday selling season," he said.
Fils-Aime also noted that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, released in June, "is selling exceptionally well now. It's driving hardware." And Nintendo hopes that its upcoming portfolio of 3DS titles will do even more to drive adoption. "We've seen similar results from Japan with the launch of Starfox (July 14). We have high expectations for (Pokemon Rumble Blast, out Oct. 24) and the two Mario titles (Super Mario 3D Land in November; Mario Kart 7 in December). Certainly, we needed to have stronger support at the launch from a first-party perspective and maybe have some of these key first-party titles earlier in the launch window in order to get the system selling stronger at the start and, ongoing, drive momentum," he continued.
Another big problem for 3DS was not having the eShop ready on time. Quite frankly, we think Nintendo should have just held off on launching 3DS until the eShop and top first-party titles were 100% ready to go.
"Certainly we've seen very positive reaction to the digital offerings but it needed to be much sooner in the launch window," Fils-Aime admitted. "As a result that created a situation where the momentum wasn't sustained. And that's why we have now had to go back and reduce the price and reduce the price by a large amount in order to make sure we have stronger momentum beginning on Friday and powering through. It's a situation where we weren't able to sustain those first few strong positive weeks. This is a momentum business and when you don't have the momentum it creates a tough situation whether it's with retailers or with third-party publishers who become a bit more reluctant to support a platform."
Nintendo has sold 4.3 million 3DS units so far and expects to sell 16 million within the first year. Can they hit that target?
