carfo said:
So, to me, their plan was to sell it overpriced, and if for some reason it doesn't sell, there would be room to fall back on and still hit profits. I am sure Nintendo had a contingency plan. I thought consoles weren't really supposed to generate revenue for companies; the real profits are coming from games / accessories. Maybe someone can come here and spit out some statistics about how much profit (or loss) the company gains or loses for each 3DS sold, before + after the price cut. It would be interesting to know that.
Nintendo doesn't work that way. They have never sold a game system for a loss until now, it's one of the reasons they can remain profitable even when their system is selling the worst among their competitors. They just don't believe in the idea of giving away the razor to make money on the razor blades, they view the game system as just as much a source of profits as the games. And it's very obvious this was NOT part of Nintendo's plan at all - their execs took huge pay cuts for failing the company in this, and being forced into such a drastic step.
carfo said:
I don't think that the Ambassador Program is worthy compensation. I think most people would rather have funds placed in their Nintendo account, or some kind of gift card that can be used only for Nintendo products. I think I know WHY Nintendo won't do this, because they'd essentially -lose- the money instead of just routing the purchase compensation to their store which they could give away free items and not lose anything.
Yes, their sales are down, but only relatively. They are still making huge profits.
Of course you would rather be handed a wad of cash for free, duh. But Nintedo isn't a charity, they didn't have to do anything at all. In fact, it's rather unheard of for Nintendo to just give away so many of their best, most popular games, let alone 20 of them. The way Nintendo runs the VC, they wouldn't even *sell* all those games for years, we'd get them at a very slow trickle, with a dozen Alleyways between each Metroid Fusion.
carfo said:
Nintendo's mistake was not releasing it originally at $170. I assume that the reasoning behind their price cut is because the more people who own a 3DS, the more profit they will receive from games and accessories.
The reasoning behind the price cut is to keep the 3DS from flopping. It's an emergency measure they were forced to do, without it they would have had to remove the 3DS from the market entirely to minimize losses like they had to do with the Virtual Boy. The system was selling so poorly that no developers were making games for it - 3DS games were being canceled left and right, big publishers weren't hiring developers to make new 3DS games, etc. Big developers were deciding that even the iPhone's super tiny profits were better than 3DS because so few people owned 3DS's, and that situation would just get worse when Sony's PSVita came on the market for the same $250 (Sony has ALWAYS been about selling their systems for a loss).
carfo said:
They make it even worse by not letting the "late adopters" have access to the games. What's the point of this? To make early adopters feel special? Are most gamers that selfish? I'd rather everyone have access to the game that way the community for that game gets as busy as it can be.
It's because, as I said, Nintendo doesn't work that way with the VC. Their plan for the VC is obviously, keep the games coming weekly to keep interest in it, and release the best games at a slow trickle, both to keep interest in the VC going, and to keep people buying third party VC games and games that might not be quite as awesome as Nintendo's biggest AAA games. The GBA itself probably wouldn't have been seen in the VC for a couple years if not for this. This is a one time dump of Nintendo's best games to the small number of people who paid full price for the 3DS as an apology for the price drop, to minimize bad feelings.