Nintendo has sent out invitations for a special event in a little over one week, and it looks like the company will be announcing a new version of the 3DS.
Rumors started popping up last month that Nintendo was so dissatisfied with the way the 3DS has performed that it is planning on revamping the hardware and launching a new product less than a year after the first 3DS handheld was released.
The September 13 event, which Nintendo called the “Nintendo 3DS Conference 2011,” will be held in Japan, but fan sites have translated the invitation to mean something about a “Nintendo 3DS new product announcement.”
The event will be streamed live over services Ustream and Nico Nico, but it won’t do much good unless you can speak Japanese.
Nintendo has a very solid track record of being able to keep its console prices solid for a long time after being released, but the 3DS is a very different story. The company has already slashed the system from $250 to $170.
In addition to being the most expensive system Nintendo has ever released, it launched without any good games, and heavyweight franchises like Mario still aren’t available.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata admitted there were many faults with the release of the 3DS. In addition to the lack of launch titles, the company missed its target of a holiday 2010 release, which could have spurred significantly more sales and given it much more traction out of the gate.
As it stands, though, a lot of things are starting to crumble at Nintendo, leading to massive cuts in stock prices and significant salary reductions for some of the company’s top executives, including Iwata’s.
So it would be crazy to think that some sort of radical changes are brewing throughout the company. If this report is true, it would be one of the most radical moves in Nintendo’s history.
