Hasta La Gadget!

You won’t be able to snap one up at your local GameStop for a full month, but the Nintendo 3DS had a solid launch in Japan today, reportedly liquidating nearly its entire initial shipment of 400,000 spiffy stereoscopic gaming handhelds by the end of the day. Some of those sales were to customers waiting in a few lines up to 2,000 persons long, but those lines were exceptions to the norm — several publications note that very few stores actually had any lines to speak of, as most Japanese electronics retailers sold out when the 3DS went on pre-order over a month ago. Get a refresher on what to expect from the system here (and here) or read all about the surprisingly orderly Japanese launch at our source links.

Update: Our friends at Engadget Japanese were on hand for the 3DS launch, and picked up a pair of systems themselves — get a closer look at one of the first retail 3DS units in the gallery below!

Nintendo 3DS launches in Japan, populace tears through initial 400,000 unit shipment originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Call it an unfortunate coincidence but Nintendo just announced its quarterly numbers only minutes after Sony announced its new quad-core Cortex-A9 pumping PSP (codenamed NGP) and new PlayStation Suite for gaming on Android tablets and cellphones. So what’s the damage? Well, to start with, Nintendo’s Q3 (October to December) operating profits were down 46 percent (104.6 billion yen ($1.3 billion) compared with 192.3 billion last year) on account of weaker Wii and DS sales coupled with a continued strong yen. The house of Mario also slashed its annual sales expectations projecting 16 million Wii consoles (down from 17.5 million units) and 22.5 million DS handhelds (down from 23.5 million) sold through March. It wasn’t all bad news though as Ninty maintained its annual operating profit forecast of 210 billion yen assisted by a projected 25% increase in Wii software shipments. Mind you, that’s not chump change, but gone are the days of the Wii / DS one-two knockout punch on the competition. And with a full quarter to go before the 3DS is launched globally, we’re not expecting any improvement to the bottom line until the next fiscal year.

Nintendo Q3 profits down 46 percent, slashes console sales projections originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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.

Immediately following its big 3DS price and release date unveiling, Nintendo had on hand dozens of new titles playing on what we’d surmise is final hardware (or at least near-final, given its February 27th Japanese launch). Our first hands-on experience was just over six months ago during E3, at which point we were very impressed with what we saw. Did this playthrough garner the same excitement? Have our decidedly older but not much wiser selves become jaded by the novelty of it all? Venture on after the break to find out.

Continue reading Nintendo 3DS in-depth preview, slight return (video)

Nintendo 3DS in-depth preview, slight return (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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