How Nintendo Recovered After Stumbling In The Streetpass

By the time Nintendo ceased production of the 3DS in September 2020, the company’s last dedicated line of exclusively handheld video game devices had completed one of gaming’s most incredible comebacks. But to come back, you must first fall, and fall the 3DS did soon after it first launched in February 2011: its first month-and-a-half sales numbers came in nearly 400,000 units short of Nintendo’s initial projections of 4 million units sold. Over the next three months, Nintendo sold just an additional 710,000 3DS units worldwide, with only 110,000 purchased in the United States. In response, Nintendo took drastic measures, slashing the 3DS price in America from $250 to $170 just a half-year after the handheld launched.

The move worked: In its first month at its new price, 3DS sales in America rose 260 percent. According to metrics released by Nintendo last year, the 3DS family of devices ended its run at a stunning 76 million units sold, still half of the original DS’s total but far more than other Nintendo platforms like the GameCube (21.7 million), Nintendo 64 (32.9 million), SNES (49.1 million), and even the original NES (61.9 million). The little system that couldn’t eventually proved it could.