Was over a friend's house to watch the Giants vs Eagles game last night and when we 'sat in a circle' ('70s show reference, we always watched episode where Eric's parents eat the special brownies) a couple of DSi commercials played back to back, and I mentioned the 3DS. I had mentioned it to two of the people already (who for some reason forgot...)but everybody loved the idea, and hated the price.
The general consensus was; 'if I'm going to pay over $200 for a console(not the word they used), I want to play it on my T.V. The people were made up of one PS2, two 360, one PS3 owners, and two of their girlfriends, none of whom own a DS and only one 360 owner who has a Wii and still plays it.
That got me wondering about the price. With such high technology (or at least percieved, since we don't know about RAM, or CPU and GPU clock speeds and autostereoscopic screens are coming to a number of US smartphones next year) is Nintendo going for an early adopter price, then quick price cuts later like Sony was forced to do with the PS3? Is that the lesson they learned from the Wii, which has yet to see a price cut?
If they had sold the Wii for more at launch, they would have had to cut the price by now, especially with the launches of the competitors motion peripherals, and Iwata(?) said they should have sold the Wii for more. What if they cut the 3DS to $199.99 for the 2011 holidays after launching at $250 or more? That would be a good strategy for Nintendo, but for those of us frothing at the mouth to get this thing, we may end up spending an extra $50 or more on it just for the privelege of having it 6-9 months before everyone else, who may by then be looking at an iPhone 3D.
This may be the first Nintendo system I do a wait and see for, since I've been paying for them with my own money, which was the N64 and I couldn't afford it at launch, otherwise I would have had it at launch like every other Nintendo system since then. (I'm only like 85% sure on that last point, the handhelds are tripping me up)