Nintendo 3DS Massive Price Drop Announced

Nintendo has just announced plans for a massive price drop for the 3DS to $169.99 down from the suggested launch price of $249.99 and effective Aug. 12, making an outstanding value even better and sets up a strong holiday season for the system.

Nintendo has sold over 830K handhelds since launch and will be rewarding early adopters with 20 free downloadable games from the Nintendo eShop. These free games are available to anyone who owns a Nintendo 3DS system and uses a wireless broadband Internet signal to connect to the Nintendo eShop at least once before 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Aug. 11. These users will automatically be registered in the Nintendo 3DS Ambassador program.

The program contains two elements:

• Starting Sept. 1, Nintendo 3DS Ambassadors will be able to download 10 NES Virtual Console games at no charge and before they are available in the Nintendo eShop to the general public. These games, including  Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Jr., Balloon Fight, Ice Climber and  The Legend of Zelda, are slated to become paid downloadable games, but Ambassadors get them early for free. Once the paid versions of the games are posted to the Nintendo eShop later in the year, the updated versions will be available to Ambassadors for download at no cost.
• By the end of 2011, Nintendo will provide Ambassadors with 10 Game Boy Advance Virtual Console games. These include games like  Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame and Mario vs. Donkey Kong. These games will be available exclusively to Ambassadors, and Nintendo currently has no plans to make these 10 games available to the general public on the Nintendo 3DS in the future.