Nintendo has announced that it’s latest handheld console, the 3DS, will be getting price cuts around the world, starting in August.
Japan will be the first country to get a price cut, and it’s a significant one too. Eurogamer reports that it will be reduced from 25,000 yen (£196) to 15,000 yen (£118), which is actually pretty significant. Nintendo has announced that the console will be marked down from $249.99 (R1740) to $169.99 (R1190).
European markets will follow suit in September, although, Nintendo mentioned that “the ranges and the markdown will be different from that of Japan”.
It seems that Nintendo wants to get more 3DSes to market in time for Christmas in order to increase game sales. Or in their words, the price reduction “will be able to create momentum for Nintendo 3DS and accelerate its market penetration toward the year-end sales season, when the line-up for the applicable software shall be enriched”.”
Obviously the question on local gamer’s lips is how this will affect our own pricing on the console. History suggests that we can expect a fairly significant price reduction locally, as has been the case with console price cuts over the past few years.
Local Nintendo Distributor Core had no comment at the time of writing, be we are banking on a local announcement in the next few weeks, if not by the end of this week.
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