Nintendo talks 3DS price-cut, downloadable content, and admits to holding back games to avoid swamping the Christmas line-up in investor Q&A

An investor Q&A posted on Nintendo’s website has revealed details of the company’s 3DS strategy, with CEO Satoru Iwata explaining that by cutting the system’s price the company deliberately “sacrificed [Nintendo’s] profitability for this fiscal year” in a bid to gather some momentum behind the handheld.

“We have decided that driving the sales of Nintendo 3DS hardware is our main priority, and in a sense, we can say that by doing this, we have sacrificed our profitability for this fiscal year. We came to the conclusion that we needed to make that bold investment, instead of focusing just on this term’s profitability.”

Iwata went on to discuss Nintendo’s move into downloadable content, with updates to the eShop paving the way for the arrival of premium extra content for 3DS titles. From the beginning of next year, add-on stages and content should be available to purchase for 3DS games, with support promised from Nintendo, as well as other software publishers.

Alluding to the shaky launch line-up of the system, and the subsequent dearth of quality 3DS releases, Iwata was also questioned on how Nintendo plans to offer a continuous stream of quality titles throughout the console’s lifespan.

He replied that one way Nintendo will tackle this problem is by holding back some games once they are completed, so as to ensure a more even spread of high-quality releases.

“Video games need to stay fresh, so it is not practical for us to put them on hold for too long, but we think that some of them may be held for a certain amount of time so that there will be a short interval between when they are completed and when they are launched. We are taking on this sort of challenge for the Nintendo 3DS.

"For example, when we look at the software lineup for the year-end sales season, it is so dense that, if we added any more software, the total sales would not increase. Accordingly, we have intentionally delayed the launch of some software titles to early next year.”