“Stick a fork in the Nintendo 3DS, because it’s done,” Michael Comeau writes for Minyanville.
“In conjunction with an altogether dismal earnings report, Nintendo announced that it is significantly cutting the price of its latest portable gaming machine just four months after release,” Comeau reports. “On August 12, you’ll be able to pick up a 3DS here in America for $170, or $80 off the launch price. Nintendo also will give away 20 free games to early adopters who splurged for a 3DS at original cost.”
“The 3DS’s predecessor, the DS, was the best-selling handheld gaming device ever made, moving over 146 million units,” Comeau writes. “So what happened in just one generation that has Nintendo scrambling in a way it never has before? The answer that that question is right in your pocket. The flop of the 3DS stems from the emergence of smartphone mania, kicked off in 2007 by the first Apple iPhone.”
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Comeau writes, “It’s not like Nintendo’s going out of business. But remember where Nintendo was just three or four years ago. It was completely dominating the industry with the Wii and 3DS, and now it’s regularly reporting horrible quarters and cutting guidance. So we can now add Nintendo to Apple’s growing list of victims — Nokia, Research In Motion, pre-Android Motorola, Palm, and Cisco’s Flip-camera unit.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: That’s a short list. Depending on the market, you can add Sony, Microsoft, Acer, and many others to that list.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ellis D.” for the heads up.]