Everyone's aware by now of the huge, unprecedented 3DS price drop. But one industry analyst believes that's only half the battle for Nintendo, that getting back in the driver's seat for the new handheld is going to be a two-front war won with both hardware and software price cuts.
Which reminds me, why for fuck's sake have they not announced this game outside of Japan yet?
In an interview with Industry Gamers, M2 Research analyst Billy Pidgeon made a big deal about the low attach rate that buyers have with recent Nintendo systems, and believes that slashing software prices is the way to address that. To give us an idea of the numbers he has in mind:
"Lower 3DS hardware prices only address part of the problem. It's more important to sell more software as packaged goods and paid digital downloads to each customer who buys a hardware unit," he said. "I would like to see Nintendo cut the retail price of packaged software to a range of $20 to $25 for the 3DS. DS software should be $20 or less."
I would be shocked if first-party games dropped to $25 or below, although the article does make a point that Nintendo is prodding third-parties to cut prices. If a general price cut on new 3DS games does actually happen, I wouldn't expect it to go below $30, which seems fair to me for a high-profile 3DS title. What do you all think?
[Source]
