For a change, a positive Nintendo editorial, from Gamesindustry.
it's the first time in years that Nintendo has faced the prospect of a genuine market failure, forcing a somewhat humiliating U-turn on pricing mere months after the device hit the market. At the new, lower price point, the 3DS has sold steadily - but many still openly question whether there is a real future for the platform.
What makes this fascinating is that Nintendo is clearly unwilling to accept defeat lying down.
Nintendo has focused its sights on the 3DS, determined to support the platform with an immense push in terms of aggressive pricing and promotion, extensive internal software development, and the calling in of favours from third-party publishers around the globe.
For all that the 3DS is still frequently met with claims that "there are no games", this is likely to be Nintendo's fastest and most aggressive schedule of first-party software in many, many years.
What's even more interesting, though, is the work the company is putting into third-party relationships. If even half of the rumours are true, TGS will see almost every major Japanese software publisher lining up to announce major games for the 3DS platform
It's easy to poke fun at such an unloveable slab of plastic, but while Twitter sought to come up with disparaging names for the peripheral ("Frankenstick" is a personal favourite), it's quite possible that there were some pretty worried faces at Sony's headquarters in Tokyo. Monster Hunter, after all, is the series which breathed new life into the beleaguered PSP in Japan.
it wants kids to graduate from Pokemon (one title which does remain curiously absent from the 3DS' release schedule for the moment) to Monster Hunter without ever leaving Nintendo platforms behind.
If it can achieve that - and bear in mind here that it's probably got quite a few months of lead time on any potential Vita version, as well as a price point that's significantly lower than Sony's upcoming hardware - then the 3DS' market position will start to look a lot more solid.
Kuddos to gamesindustry for covering the recent news, rumors and leaks with a different angle.it's also worth bearing in mind that many publishers have a strong vested interest in seeing the 3DS succeed. For publishers and developers faced with an uncertain future at the mercy of the extremely low price points and unfamiliar business models represented by the rapidly growing iOS model of handheld gaming, the 3DS is a potential lifeline - while for those companies whose focus on RPGs and other niche titles that are too expensive to develop on HD consoles, the 3DS (like the DS before it) represents the potential to reach a broad, modern audience without spending more money that it cost to develop on the PS2.
The 3DS, in other words, might not just be good for Nintendo - it could be good for a whole swathe of the traditional games industry, which presently fears being crushed between the twin giants of low-risk, low-revenue iOS, and high-risk, prohibitively expensive AAA console development. It's no wonder, then, that Nintendo doesn't lack for allies when it seeks to bolster the position of the 3DS - and it simply makes it all the more fascinating that this is no longer a battle to make a console successful, but rather a battle to secure a future for an entire business model.