Amazon halts 3DS sales while investigating complaints

By Molly McHugh July 25, 2011

The Nintendo 3DS has been one of the hot items this year, but Amazon has frozen its sales. “While this item is available from other marketplace sellers on this page, it is not currently offered by Amazon.com because customers have told us there may be something wrong with our inventory of the item, the way we are shipping it, or the way it’s describe here. (Thanks for the tip!). We’re working to fix the problem as quickly as possible,” Amazon’s product page for the 3DS reads.

This could possibly have to do with Amazon’s sales supply, but there have been complaints about a manufacturing issue. Some have complained that the top half of the 3DS, the portion with the screen, doesn’t latch properly, causing it to “wobble” as many customers have said. As a result, when the device is closed the two halves can scratch against each other. One NeoGaf forum user contacted Nintendo to ask about the malfunction, and reportedly was told that: “The flip-screen is loose when it’s opened, please inform them that Nintendo has confirmed as long as the upper screen locks into place, the unit is within Nintendo’s design specification. Customers can call 1-800-255-3700.”

If a Nintendo rep actually gave this response, it would appear that the company knows the screen isn’t as secure as customers think it should be and as long as the clamshell device is locking into place when shut, it’s fine. And by fine, Nintendo likely means does not qualify for a refund.

It seems like the 3DS hype hasn’t panned out quite as Nintendo wished. In April, Nintendo announced it missed its projected sales mark for the handheld gaming device and that the company needed to improve its efforts to promote the product. But frozen sales at Amazon, the Internet’s most prolific retailer, aren’t going to help boost sales numbers at all. And even if the issue isn’t hardware-related, the speculation circulating the pulled item isn’t going to do Nintendo any favors.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Before coming to Digital Trends, Molly worked as a freelance writer, occasional photographer, and general technical lackey…

Gaming

Nintendo’s Wii Shop Channel and DSi shops are back online

Nintendo 3DS close-up.

After months of service outages, Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel and DSi Shop are back online.

Nintendo's two virtual marketplace services went down in March of this year. In a statement to Kotaku on the outage, Nintendo acknowledged the downtime but had nothing to report other than that the shops were undergoing maintenance and that it would provide updates on them at a later date. It seems it completely skipped the update and simply put both back online instead.

Gaming

The 25 best Nintendo 3DS games

Nintendo 3DS close-up.

If you're looking for the best Nintendo 3DS games, there's no shortage of titles to choose from, thanks to the console's long life cycle.

The 3DS has enjoyed several updates over the years, but each was compatible with its predecessor, and that translates to a large and diverse library. It's getting increasingly tough to find a 3DS, especially since Nintendo has officially discontinued the console and no longer supports it to focus on releasing Switch games. Even so, the legacy of the 3DS lives on with a long list of excellent, pocket-sized adventures. Here are our favorite ones.

Gaming

Nintendo’s eShop closures are a necessary, but messy move

A Nintendo Wii U gamepad flat on a table.

Nintendo last week announced its intentions to shut down the Wii U and 3DS eShops, the systems' digital storefronts, in March 2023. This decision was disappointing for hardcore fans who stuck with Nintendo during that rocky era and extremely worrying as many of the games available on the platforms won't be preserved.
More significant Wii U games and a handful of 3DS titles were ported to Switch, but many titles are still stuck on those systems and can’t be ported. Once the digital storefront shutdowns, digital-only titles will be gone forever, and physical copies of these titles will get more expensive and harder to experience. Fans and game preservationists have not been pleased by this decision, with the Video Game History Foundation giving the most candid response.
https://twitter.com/GameHistoryOrg/status/1494398068346654720
Following this announcement, Digital Trends spoke to an industry analyst and game preservationists to get a better idea of what exactly caused Nintendo to shut down these stores and to learn how it could do a better job at preserving its legacy.
Why is Nintendo shutting down the 3DS and Wii eShops?
Officially, Nintendo’s FAQ on the eShop closures says “this is part of the natural life cycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time." The answer doesn’t get into specifics and might confuse those still playing games on the system or fans of games only available on Wii U or 3DS. Omdia Principal Analyst Matthew Bailey explains Nintendo’s user base argument in more detail, highlighting the massive gap between the number of people playing the Switch as opposed to the Wii U.
“While Omdia expects the number of Switch consoles in active use to exceed 90 million on a global basis this year, the Wii U’s global active installed base will drop under one million in 2022,” he explains. “Even when you include the more enduring 3DS family of consoles into the equation, the Switch still comfortably accounts for over 90% of Nintendo’s total active console install base.”
If one is going off just the numbers, it’s sensible that Nintendo would want to focus on the majority of its players. Bailey admits that “Switch users are already reaping the benefits of Nintendo’s singular first-party development focus on one platform.” Still, one might argue that Nintendo should just let the eShops remain up even if it isn’t actively updating or maintaining them.

Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn’t see that as possible due to cost and security issues. Game Over Thrity, a Twitter user with over 20 years of experience working on IT projects and infrastructure, shed some light on what might have influenced Nintendo’s decision-making in a thread.
“As these systems age, they require patches, security, special contracts, updates, and personnel that know how they were built (and maintained),” his Twitter thread explains. “As time goes on, there are security holes, servers, code, infrastructure, etc., that can’t be brought up to modern standards. It becomes a constant struggle between maintaining legacy systems, paying people to do so, and trying to keep up with global regulations. It’s not cheap by any means. They can’t just ‘leave the lights on’ and stop supporting them. What if someone hacked the payment processor?”
With every passing year, the Wii U and 3DS eShops likely became more expensive to maintain and an increased security risk for the video game publisher. Instead of investing the time and resources into pleasing a smaller amount of players, the easier option is to turn everything off entirely. While he isn’t affiliated with Nintendo, Game Over Thirty’s assessment aligns with what we’ve heard from Nintendo and Omdia.
"The Wii U’s global active installed base will drop under one million in 2022."