Iwata 'Not Anticipating' Further 3DS Price Drops, Holding Back Software

In a Q&A session following a recent investor briefing, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata implied that it would not be repeating this year's significant 3DS price cut in the near future, and admitted to holding back some completed 3DS software for release after the busy holiday season. In the wide-ranging Q&A, Iwata said Nintendo made the decision to slash the price of the 3DS earlier this year in order to raise interest in the system at the expense of profitability. Looking forward to the 2013 fiscal year, however, the Nintendo president said the company was "not anticipating a situation where we must expand the hardware by generating a large loss on the sales of the hardware," implying that a similar price drop would not be necessary in the near future. "During the fiscal year ending March 2013, we are expecting the profitability of Nintendo 3DS hardware to improve significantly," he said. "As long as we can create sufficient momentum, I think we will be able to come close to our usual course of business operations in the next fiscal year." Elsewhere in the Q&A session, Iwata said the company was intentionally holding back some completed 3DS software to avoid limiting its impact during the crowded holiday season. "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," he said. For 3DS software specifically, Iwata said the holiday season was "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." Following upcoming holiday season releases for Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7, Nintendo has announced Kid Icarus: Uprising, Luigi's Mansion 2, Paper Mario and Animal Crossing 3DS titles for some time next year.