If you picked up a new 3DS at some point this year you might have noticed something: there aren’t too many games out for the handheld that are worth owning. Nintendo hears you. Not only are they aware of the issue, but they went so far as to admit that they purposefully pushed certain titles out of 2011 and into next year, despite their development cycles being complete.
For us to provide software titles one after another, one idea is, ‘Isn’t it possible for Nintendo to stock some of its software titles instead of launching them as soon as the development is completed?’ Video games need to stay fresh, so it is not practical for us to put them on hold for too long, but we think that some of them may be held for a certain amount of time so that there will be a short interval between when they are completed and when they are launched. We are taking on this sort of challenge for the Nintendo 3DS. For example, when we look at the software lineup for the year-end sales season, it is so dense that, if we added any more software, the total sales would not increase. Accordingly, we have intentionally delayed the launch of some software titles to early next year.
The 3DS has had an incredibly difficult go of things since it launched, and Nintendo was forced to cut the price of the handheld and give away downloadable games for free to early adopters. Part of the problem is that the platform’s release schedule has been a barren wasteland aside from a select few gems such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D.
To the Big N’s credit, they are releasing a duo of promising titles before year’s end that will likely make 3DS owners happy campers: Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7. It seems that they moved other first party software out of the way of those two titles and saved them to pad out 2012. Let’s just hope they can consistently deliver worthy first and third party games throughout all of next year. Otherwise they are going to have some incredibly angry fans on their hands – not to mention a slew of gamers that will happily turn to Sony’s PS Vita instead.
[Sources: Nintendo Destructoid]
