Hello Malstrom,
After a good nights sleep I reconsider my hype of the price drop was foolish. As a long time reader of your blog and a former Gamecube/N64 console owner (I bought them when I was younger and gullible.) that a price drop is not going to fix the 3DS problems.
The system still has terrible battery life, region locking, miss placed d pad and still no 2D Mario or any arcade value games at all. Why should I get excited for announcements from third party’s when games like Assassins Creed have already being cancelled and the best game on the system (Street Fighter 4) I already own for the Xbox 360 which I don’t enjoy as much as Street Fighter 3 third strike, which I await to buy for cheap off the arcade.
Its sad to think we almost had old Nintendo back. The Wii and DS was a bright star in an industry full of copy cats and movie maker wannabes. After watching my favorite console developer SEGA die I really wanted Nintendo to get their act together and just make games I can sit back, play with friends with little to no learning or distractions. Those times are over.
I’m going to instead repurchase another DS light in case my first DS dies and then buy the many, many more titles on the DS I still have yet to play. Maybe one day gaming will have a revolution again, till then, we wait it out and enjoy what other entertainment there is in life.
I think the best way to look at the 3DS situation is with this chart from the Blue Ocean Strategy:
People like me are in the Second Tier: the Refusing customers. As you said, emailer, the 3DS is full of things that causes me to refuse the system. Things like low battery life, the 3d output, and the placement of the D-Pad. A price drop can only affect the first tier.
Would lowering the price on Mortal Kombat cause the game to sell to females? Of course not. Females are a ‘refusing customer’ to Mortal Kombat (due to its violence). This isn’t necessarily bad because Mortal Kombat’s identity is about violence. But it becomes bad with a console. I had no reason to refuse the Wii or even be a ‘soon to be’ customer. I was there day one.
The Vita has me in Tier One. I’m not going to buy a Vita yet, but I am not a refusing customer for it. Vita hasn’t done anything to make me say, “No way am I buying that!” Maybe it will in the coming months. Nintendo’s direction with the 3DS is pushing the DS base (people like ourselves) away.
I’ve asked myself, what would it take for me to buy a 3DS? Aside from changes like better battery life in the hardware, what about the software? I want a healthy library of Gameboy-esque games. I would be very excited for an Old School Zelda game (no Aonuma puzzles) which would work quite well with that sliding thumb pad.
Did you know when I bought the DS? I imported the red DS from Japan when it was introduced with Jump Superstars. It was the red DS and Jump Superstars that people attribute to the beginning of the DS explosion. And since I imported, my sale shows up in Media Create, and I was a participant in the Japanese DS explosion of 2005. And I did buy a Wii at launch as well (and that exploded day one as well). So I sense should I buy the 3DS, the mass market will be following me.
I was never a refusing customer of the DS. I was actually happy with the DS announcement due to the SNES configuration of buttons (something that should have occurred with the Gameboy Advance). However, Mario 64 DS and the ‘joke’ of launch DS games gave me plenty of reason to stay away. And I kept staying away until E3 2005 when Nintendo announced a brand new 2d Mario. That got my attention big time.
As a rule, I always wait to buy a system until there are 6 games I wish to buy. 3 of those games must be out, and 3 of those games must be coming out. I bought Advance Wars DS, Meteos, and some other game. And I snapped up Mario Kart DS, Castlevania DS, and Tetris DS the day they released. I also bought NSMB DS and Final Fantasy 3 the day they came out. I also have some smaller games like Bomberman (love that multiplayer bomberman!). Those were the games I bought within 2005 and early 2006.
The 3DS library really sucks. Where is the 2d Mario? Where is Castlevania? The only game that looks worthwhile to me is Mario Kart 7 which we might as well call Mario Kite. “But Luigi’s Mansion 2 is coming out, Malstrom!” Oh boy. Let me rush out the door and camp out for Luigi’s Mansion 2! “And Kid Icarus! OMG!” Uh huh. In other words, there is nothing on the 3DS.
By the placement of the D-Pad in the wrong spot, the high prices of Gameboy games, and how I do not control these digital downloads, all the digital software from Nintendo won’t sell with me. Fix the D-pad, reduce the Gameboy game prices, and make it where I don’t have to buy digital downloads for every piece of Nintendo hardware I own (have backwards compatibility with digital downloads across all future Nintendo hardware), and I might be impressed.
I have no problem buying Super Mario Brothers for the NES and perhaps rebuying it for Super Mario All-Stars. But it is highway robbery to expect me to buy Super Mario Brothers for every Nintendo hardware from here and beyond. I should only have to buy it once and be able to play it on every Nintendo system forward. I will even pay a higher price tag for this to occur.
Nintendo sees its game systems and games as ‘disposable’, as ‘cycles’, but the customers do not. To us, the products are eternal and are expected to be used for twenty years or more. I think Nintendo should also reconsider its thinking of the ‘console cycle’ as well. People will refuse to buy a console if Nintendo thinks it is natural to only abandon it after a couple of years.