It's official: 3DS launching March 27 for $249

[Dracarys]

UK gets it 25th March, RRP £230, or around $370. RRP in Europe is €250 or around $340/£210. As always the UK gets the worst deal.

Those prices are a joke, no wonder they region locked it. Roll on homebrew.

[riderkid]

First man to step up to the plate, his money's on the table. Three years. Anyone else willing to take a punt?

ok im willing to say 2013 at e3. also i hope this a joke right now i read on the wiki page pikachu is in mercenaries...please tel em its a fuckin joke and if not im gonan kill that little fucker every time i choose him

[Zombie Fred]

As Emma gets the 3DS on launch day I will have the upper hand on playing the games I want to play at launch, when she is done playing with the device during the day. I'm going to wait for the second version to come out between 18-24 months before buying my own 3DS because I have no incentive to buy one yet and would rather a much better tech-savy 3DS than have it as it is on release. The price is quite high for launch but to hell with it, Zelda: OOT is goin to be fantastic <3

[Alexia_Ashford]

As Emma gets the 3DS on launch day I will have the upper hand on playing the games I want to play at launch

[Vector]

Like I've said before, the 3DS's lineup looks sweet, especially after seeing footage of Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance...but not for $250. That's a pretty obscene price, considering you can get an Xbox for $50 less. I'll wait for a price drop and the inevitable Lite XL SuperDuper 3DS Special, as alluded to by Mr. Spencer above.

[Dracarys]

Like I've said before, the 3DS's lineup looks sweet, especially after seeing footage of Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance...but not for $250. That's a pretty obscene price, considering you can get an Xbox for $50 less. I'll wait for a price drop and the inevitable Lite XL SuperDuper 3DS Special, as alluded to by Mr. Spencer above.

You think US pricing is bad? Try US vs UK price.


US Store Price - $249.99 (£156.31)
UK Store Price - £219.99 ($351.79)



Even accounting for VAT this is just wrong.

[rewak]

I posted a few back that actually the RRP in the UK is £230, Europe €250

[Rombie]

NZ and Australia haven't even been given a date or price yet, won't happen until Nintendo AU gets it's A into G and does a conference, which happens around the 8th of Feb. But I can bet you quite comfortably that the price set for both countries will make the UK one look quite nice by comparison if previous launch prices of Nintendo products here are anything to go by.

[Mr. Spencer]

You think US pricing is bad? Try US vs UK price.


US Store Price - $249.99 (£156.31)
UK Store Price - £219.99 ($351.79)



Even accounting for VAT this is just wrong.

It's always been this way, and it always will be.

[The Dude]

Read about Region Locking.
Cancelled my PAL Pre-Order as a result.

[riderkid]

Read about Region Locking.
Cancelled my PAL Pre-Order as a result.

good idea

[Carnivol]

So far it seems like the region encodings will coexist with the ratings system, which means that it'll basically be up to a mixture of ratings boards and publishers to decide which regions are open/closed on various releases. (ie. anything without a worldwide release will potentially be region locked - which means it'll probably follow a similar pattern as the 360s region locking...)

The Nordic price of the 3DS is actually way less than what the PSP launched at (and roughly the same as what the original NDS cost on launch), so the price of the hardware itself is of no concern to me.

[I_Am_Nemesis]

Ah damn it, way out of my price range! And I really want to play Revelations and Mercs.
God I hate all of the 3d hype at the moment. 3D isn't even a new thing, especially not the way Hollywood is using it. I remember going to an Imax as a child and seeing these great 3D short films which used the effect brilliantly and so far I havn't seen that in any of the big blockbuster 3D films I've seen.
Ah well, I'll see if I can hold out until theres a price drop.

[GuardhouseMusic]

Yeah, there's a good chance this'll be a launch purchase for me. I never owned any single iteration of the DS, so with a back library of notable titles (Hotel Dusk, Ace Attorney, Castlevania, REDS, etc) it serves more than one purpose in terms of the game library.

Oh, and one of the launch games is Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor "Overclocked?" *drooooooooooool* Never played the original version, and I'll be glad to play this one. It'll tide me over until Mercs/Revelations.

[Pikminister]

....how long it'll take before Nintendo release a 3DS Lite or any other successor?

A lot of ppl are wondering about that, actually.

Nintendo is insisting it won’t be issuing a slimmer, revised version of the 3DS in the short term. This is because, as MCV reports, it has used every technique at its disposal to make the device as compact as possible already.

Kenichi Sugino of Nintendo R&D told MCV: “We don’t have any short term plans for creating a more compact version of Nintendo 3DS like we did with Nintendo DS Lite.”

But like I said, in about 3 years they will probably release another version. Increasing the battery life and possibly adding 3G support or something along those lines (unlikely, though... because it won't be a free service)