Hasta La Gadget!

As we learned doing that big history of portable gaming story yesterday, price is often a deciding factor in the never-ending console wars. It’s something that has won plenty of battles for Nintendo on a number of systems, like the Game Boy, which stayed on top of the portable gaming heap for what seemed like forever.

At first glance, $249 seems a bit pricey for the Nintendo 3DS, particularly given what the company has charged for portables in the past. Given the system’s pretty advanced feature set, however, it actually seems pretty decent. You’ve got 3D gaming, Internet access via WiFi, 3D image capture, and a lot more. This is shaping up to be a pretty rad little device.

The question then, I suppose, is: is $249 too cheap? A few analysts think so. Says Wedbush Securities’ Michael Pachter, “I’m impressed that they had the confidence to charge $249; I think that they’re going to regret it.” Pachter reasons that the price will lead to sell outs in stores, leading to eBay sales of $500 a piece.

Perhaps, but Nintendo has long been known for its aggressive pricing, giving players more bang for their buck than, say a Sony or Microsoft. Sell outs would be unfortunate, certainly, but they didn’t seem to do too much to the Wii’s momentum–in fact, if anything, they made that console a hotter commodity.

Nintendo is making the right decision by pricing this thing as low as possible.