Nintendo disappointed many children with the announcement that they made Wednesday. Their 3DS will not be available by the holiday season for Japan. When they first introduced their 3DS portable gaming system to the world at E3 back in June, Nintendo said that they would be releasing the device to the United States in March 2011, but that they would release the 3DS to its native Japan for the holidays. Now they are saying that this simply is not possible.
Due to this disappointing news, Nintendo's stock has dropped 9.34 percent in the Osaka Securities Exchange. Now I thought that this news would make a difference to the company’s numbers but not an almost ten percent drop!
The Nintendo 3DS has been highly anticipated since its announcement. A mobile device that utilizes 3D technology without the need for 3D glasses, now that’s something to talk about. The tech community was in awe after several demonstrations following Nintendo’s announcement. It was the week after the demonstrations that Nintendo publicized their release dates for the device.
Nintendo told the press Wednesday that Japan would unfortunately not be seeing the device until February 2011. This means that Nintendo will not have any kind of blockbuster device being released for the holiday season. That most likely means that holiday gaming sales will be dominated by Sony’s Playstation Move and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Kinect. Motion-based gaming is expanding to all game systems this year and is set to be a hit. Unfortunately for Nintendo, they will not have a new product to offer for the 2010 holiday season, but I’m sure that many people will still patiently wait with great anticipation for the release of the 3DS, even if they won’t be seeing it under their tree this year.