Nintendo set to unveil 3D console
By Jonathan Soble in Tokyo
Published: February 25 2011 19:36 | Last updated: February 25 2011 23:00
Nintendo will on Saturday fire the latest salvo in the battle for videogamers’ hearts and minds with the launch of its 3DS portable console.
The model, which will go on sale in Japan, is the first to feature a 3D screen that can be viewed with the naked eye, eliminating the need for glasses, which has kept many consumers away from 3D televisions and films.
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Nintendo is counting on the screen to give it an edge over Sony, which is planning to introduce a new – but still two-dimensional – version of its PlayStation Portable console this year. Nintendo’s original handheld console, the six-year-old DS, has outsold Sony’s PSP two-to-one.
Sony will not be the 3DS’s only rival, however. Nintendo must also contend with smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone, a relatively new but booming category that is luring casual gamers away from specialised gaming machines.
“For consumers the question is no longer simply, ‘Which game console will I buy’,” Nikkei Business magazine, a Japanese weekly, noted in a recent feature on the 3DS.
In the US, the biggest gaming market, sales of specialised consoles fell 13 per cent last year to $6.3bn, said research firm NPD, as the migration of casual gamers was compounded by a lack of new products from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.
Nintendo had intended to introduce the 3DS before Christmas but production problems forced it to delay. That contributed to a 58 per cent fall in net profit for the quarter to December, figures released by the company last month revealed.
Nintendo has priced the 3DS ambitiously: at Y25,000 ($306) in Japan, it is Y10,000 more expensive than its forerunner the DS and Y5,000 more than the Wii, Nintendo’s hit motion-controlled living-room console.
The 3DS is to launch in Europe on March 25 and in the US on March 27.
The price has not stopped Japanese gamers from snapping up virtually all available 3DSs since pre-orders began on January 20. Online shops such as Amazon sold out in minutes and a futures market of sorts has emerged online, with reserved machines selling on auction sites for a premium of Y3,000-Y5,000.
Nintendo aims to ship 4m 3DS devices by the end of March to meet demand.
One risk for Nintendo is that the 3DS’s fortunes are staked to a broader trend: 3-D video technology, whose full appeal to consumers remains unproven. Sales of 3D televisions, which manufacturers introduced last year, have been weaker than many had expected, and 3D film has produced only a small number of unqualified hits.
Even without glasses, the 3DS may not be for everyone. Nintendo has warned that children under the age of six should use the device only in 2D mode to avoid potential eye damage.
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