Reggie: Lack of First Party Content and No eShop at Launch Caused Price Cut
NOA President
Straight to it. This is what Reggie Fils-Aime had to say…
“…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. Certainly we’ve seen very positive reaction to the digital offerings but it needed to be much sooner in the launch window. 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.”
Well if I’d read correctly now, it means that Nintendo’s plan of handing over the 3DS launch to third parties as a mark of support for them has indeed backfired, as we did receive some not-so-great titles in the first few weeks of launch.
Here’s hoping the new price drop, the release of the Flame Red 3DS and Nintendo’s next 4 titles can rectify that.
Related articles
- Super Mario 3D Land And Mario Kart 7 Release Dates? (nintendoscene.com)
- Nintendo E3 History: 2004 – ‘Reggie-lution’ (nintendoscene.com)
- Nintendo at E3 2011: Coming to a 3DS near you soon… (nintendoscene.com)
- Japan 3DS eShop Launch Line-Up (nintendoscene.com)
- Nintendo at E3 2011: Wii U is revealed (nintendoscene.com)
Not like this is new for Nintendo and launch games. Started w/ the GameCube. It had some good 1st party games but it didn’t have that game that they were backing the launch on. I think the system needs either a good Mario or Zelda game to launch a system. Luigi mansion helped the GC but I’m staying to my guns that for a system to work it needs a good big name game to help launch popularity.
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Games sell systems. I love my 3DS and I wanted to get in on day one since I haven’t in a long time.
Still, I spent a couple of weeks without a game because I didn’t *have* to have any of the launch line up.
I am impatient for the original first party titles to come but in the meantime, I’m loving the system for itself. See blog 🙂
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