There are several bundles of the 3DS being released in Japan. I noticed the 3d Mario Land one that includes Super Mario Brothers NES on the cartridge.
If 3DS sales are going well, why is Nintendo doing this? Or rather, why is Nintendo, who is already losing money on 3DS hardware, willing to lose more money on giving away the software?
People may assume the Vita is dead, but Nintendo doesn’t seem to think so. Sony’s PSP was able to make an impressive foothold in Japan. All it took was one game (Monster Hunter) to breath life into the PSP. The same could happen with Vita, and Nintendo knows this.
I think Nintendo’s strategy is to create such a massive install base, at any cost, so that any third party developer would not want to develop for Vita.
People who I talked to who bought the Vita are impressed. And even I’m curious about it. I like the concept of Vita as it just has one nice large screen without all the bloated junk that has crept up in the 3DS. With the 3DS, you have all these cameras, multiple screens that aren’t the same size, oh and that nasty 3d stuff.
One day, Vita will have a price cut. And one day, there will be more games on Vita (including the backlog of PS1 games). Vita definitely has potential to take off. I know this because Nintendo is willing to shell out all this money trying to push the 3DS long after it has already started to sell somewhat decently.