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Discussion Is there a more impressive hardware comeback than the 3DS?

Mer.Saloon

Mer.Saloon

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Just thinking about the bind Nintendo were when they released the 3DS at its original price, as well as the sparse release dates for quality games.

Then I also remember the utter apathy for the hardware itself following the rise of mobile gaming. People talked about how inconsistent the 3D was, and how blurry the screen looked, or how underpowered it was to mobile.

And then Nintendo turned it around when they cut the price alongside the release of Mario 3DLand. And from then on, Nintendo just kept the momentum going. Even when the Wii U was crashing and burning, we got incredible Kirby titles, a new Zelda, solid Pokemon games, Luigi's Mansion 2, Kid Icarus, and a huge number of fun experiments with the Mii games. And really great 3rd party games from Capcom, like Resident Evil Revelations, the Yokai Watch series, kingdom Hearts, etc.

I do remember some of the bitterness about 3DS development taking away from Wii U development too. It certainly didn't help Nintendo's image amongst console obsessed american gamers on forums like GaF who still thought Nintendo was crashing and burning as a whole.

Granted, none of it was enough to bring the 3DS back to DS levels of success. But this little machine really kept Nintendo going through the troubles of the Wii U and I loved it for it.
 
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Mer.Saloon said:
Oooooooh. That. That right there. Yeah.

I don't have the chart in front of me, but didn't Sony lose money throughout the whole thing's life?
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They lost all the money they made from the PS1 and PS2. It was going to be my vote for that reason since they ended the generation looking good and managed to transition successfully to the PS4.

The 3DS, despite how negative its launch was, kept them afloat during the Wii U era. It clearly did well enough relatively early on even if it didn’t reach the heights of the DS.
 
julian said:
They lost all the money they made from the PS1 and PS2. It was going to be my vote for that reason since they ended the generation looking good and managed to transition successfully to the PS4.

The 3DS, despite how negative its launch was, kept them afloat during the Wii U era. It clearly did well enough relatively early on even if it didn’t reach the heights of the DS.
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I mean kinda ended good, there was a massive hack near the end of it's lifespan too.
 
3DS comeback was pretty impressive. I remember the Ambassadors Program they offered to those who purchased the system at the original MSRP before they dropped the price. They were definitely in a pickle, but the software that would follow definitely made up for it.
 
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also the Sega Genesis, people forget it actually wasn't really doing that well at least until Sonic and the marketing happened
 
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Launch Model DS to DS Lite is the only correct answer. That was unstoppable. Nintendo sold about 110m units in a 4-year spell. Both PS3 and 3DS were exercises in damage control limitation to different degrees, and would be considered relative failures to their predecessors.
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
Comeback? 3DS peaked extremely early and then was down down down. They had one bad quarter before dropping the price. One bad quarter which was part of its highest year.
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Yeah, this is my biggest negative when it comes to the 3DS, it starts out strong and exciting with big games like Kid Icarus, a Nintendo exclusive resident evil! A quite solid port of street fighter! Tales of the abyss! Layton in 3d and a ace attorney crossover!

But then a lot of third parties start treating it as a afterthought, e.g., if you're not in to monster hunter, Capcom isn't that interested in the platform shortly, to the point where neither great ace attorney game got localised, and they shifted the franchise to digital only in the west.

Atlus and Square (though even with putting them here, Nintendo had to take on several localisations for them) put out some solid work through the life of the handheld, but if you wanted more than JRPGs from major publishers, things became pretty barren pretty fast.
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
I don't think "Started strong, and then did worse but not VIRTUAL BOY worse" is enough to be considered a comeback.
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The one bad quarter was enough to cause Nintendo to move into unprofitability when the Wii U couldn't pick up the slack.

And yes, managing to keep the company alive and profitable (which they still managed after a while) is a comeback. Especially when everything was against it to fail and drag Nintendo with the Wii U.
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
I don't think "Started strong, and then did worse but not VIRTUAL BOY worse" is enough to be considered a comeback.
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You just have to look at the PSVITA which started out moderately close to the 3DS at launch, but rapidly lost that, or the Wii U, for what not being able to do damage control and stage a comeback looks like
 
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The 3DS was an extremely weird console. Came out way overpriced, and no one really cared about the "selling point" of 3D. The design of the 3D screen also precluded a lot of the more interesting game types possible on the original DS. It ended up recovering by releasing lots of good software, most of which didn't really rely on the 3D screen too heavily. And it ended overstaying its welcome a bit as sales collapsed post-Switch, to the chagrin of Nintendo hoping to squeeze some more sales out of exclusive titles.

I have a lot of fond memories of it, but the 3DS lived a strange life.
 
DS had a smaller first year than GBA or 3DS, but went on to more than dectuple it. PS3 started out with an unattractive and expensive product versus two strong competitors, had a first year under 10 million, and still managed to get the hardware somewhere near 90 million. Both I think much better fit comeback than 3DS which had one bad quarter followed by a few decent quarters followed by not much.
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JoshuaJSlone said:
DS had a smaller first year than GBA or 3DS, but went on to more than dectuple it. PS3 started out with an unattractive and expensive product versus two strong competitors, had a first year under 10 million, and still managed to get the hardware somewhere near 90 million. Both I think much better fit comeback than 3DS which had one bad quarter followed by a few decent quarters followed by not much.
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Holding steady with the peak of the mobile market when your competitor dropped off the face of the earth, and when you almost did yourself is pretty comebacky.

Constantly being derided as irrelevant by the larger market and being dropped by every major 3rd party after 1 decent go at it while still managing to maintain decent numbers seems to me comebacky.

At the least the PS3 was a quality product. Waay too expensive for its own good. But at the least it was impressive tech. 3DS wasn't even the most impressive dedicated handheld.

Maybe its not like an return to form like the Switch was. But it still managed to maintain profits which is important.
 
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For sure the comeback of the 3DS was a bright sport during the “dark times” around 2012-2016. It was a good time to be a 3DS player once they cut the price, but to me the real comeback started when they replaced the OG model with the XL (1st revision). The first model was pretty crappy, and in hindsight, I think played a large factor in the slow pace of sales initially. But man…2013-2016 3DS was sooooo good!
 
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Linkstrikesback said:
But then a lot of third parties start treating it as a afterthought, e.g., if you're not in to monster hunter, Capcom isn't that interested in the platform shortly, to the point where neither great ace attorney game got localised, and they shifted the franchise to digital only in the west.
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That's because those games didn't sell. Revelations 3ds release didn't even hit a million units, for one of the biggest showcases of the console. And then of course Ace Attorney saw a decent decline from the DS. Layton vs Phoenix Wright was also a pretty disappointing sales wise. The reason 3DS software was more exciting and varied at first is because publishers didn't realize then what blew past sales expectations relative to budget / localization cost. In some way Kid Icarus felt like the same thing, such a home console experience did just ok on the thing.

I do agree with the general idea though. To this day I can't tell if the 3ds has one of the best bespoke 3rd party libraries or not, since it had a lot of pretty impressive titles, but most of them we're jrpgs or arpgs.
 
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When the 3ds delivered it really fucking delivered. Too many high quality games to count, it just took nintendo and its devs some time to get there due to the increased dev cost and complexity compared to making ds games.
 
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Gingerbread Man said:
Yeah, 3DS was Nintendo's PS3.

PS3 was also Sony's Saturn.

And Wii U was close to Nintendo's DreamCast.
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Not even remotely. Nintendo had their coffers way more filled when they went from Wii to Wii U than Sega did when they went from Saturn to Dreamcast.

Anyway... yeah the way the PS3 recovered after a disastrous first impression and a launch period that dragged on for longer than Sony wanted to was way more impressive, even if I don't care for a lot of the PS3's biggest exclusive titles. To me, the 3DS didn't so much have a comeback as it took a while to rev up - remember the first year of 3DS games and how it was quite barren in hindsight? 2012 was when the system finally started to deliver on games (KI:U, SM3DL etc.) and the last remnants of the DS started fizzling out.

And while I don't think the 3DS hit the same high notes the DS did all the time... it still was probably the best system Gen 8 had to offer.
 
OctoSplattack said:
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IIRC, Sony lost like 3x the money on the PS3 that Sega did on the Dreamcast; considering they're, y'know, Sony, they were able to pull from their deep pockets and salvage it. The PS3's pseudo-failure also gave us the immortal meme of PS3 having no games.

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So yeah, saying the 3DS was Nintendo's PS3 feels right. It was a strange console (and the fact that I bought it like a month before the price cut stings a bit lol), but there were certainly some great games on it, but you could feel it was part of a dying era regarding dedicated handhelds.

Spyder said:
It's kind of amazing how well Nintendo averted a Wii U style failure in a way they couldn't with the Wii U.
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3DS had a much more appealing form factor and Nintendo's dedicated handheld line was historically much more successful than their home consoles. Also helps that 3DS eventually got Pokemon games.
 
freedomseekr said:
Not even remotely. Nintendo had their coffers way more filled when they went from Wii to Wii U than Sega did when they went from Saturn to Dreamcast.

Anyway... yeah the way the PS3 recovered after a disastrous first impression and a launch period that dragged on for longer than Sony wanted to was way more impressive, even if I don't care for a lot of the PS3's biggest exclusive titles. To me, the 3DS didn't so much have a comeback as it took a while to rev up - remember the first year of 3DS games and how it was quite barren in hindsight? 2012 was when the system finally started to deliver on games (KI:U, SM3DL etc.) and the last remnants of the DS started fizzling out.

And while I don't think the 3DS hit the same high notes the DS did all the time... it still was probably the best system Gen 8 had to offer.
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Yeah. Nintendo never even lost nearly as much money on Wii U as SONY lost on their respective systems.

Nintendo barely managed to eek profits during the gen, and mitigate losses. Give them credit for being able to save the cash when things get tough. Also thanks to the 3DS for keeping the ship upright.

Edit: changed wording due to me finally getting this chart again.


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Would be interesting how the 3DS would have been sold if it had the way superior 3D from the New 3DS from the beginning, the difference in quality it was night and day.

The "old" 3D was uncomfortable because you had to hold the 3DS in a fixed position to work. Mist people turned 3D off for that reason, if it had been the superior 3D at release more people could have been interested.
 
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Biggest thing that helped the 3DS was the price drop along with the early bundles. Yes they had to throw a bone to early adopters, but getting the system from $250 down to $170 was huge for system growth along with $199 bundles like the OOT system.

$250 at the time for a system was a LOT in those days especially with the 3D being cool but also janky AF and throw away for a lot of people.
 
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I don’t how big the comeback was, but the SNES and Genesis were neck-and-neck until Rare swung in with Donkey Kong Country and gave the system an all-new life and it pushed ahead pretty significantly after that.

The 3DS was a great example of showing just how important new software is to selling your system. I wasn’t personally disappointed though because I really couldn’t ask for more than having my favorite game of all time (Ocarina of Time) very close to launch that June.
 
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Angel Whispers said:
Launch Model DS to DS Lite is the only correct answer. That was unstoppable. Nintendo sold about 110m units in a 4-year spell. Both PS3 and 3DS were exercises in damage control limitation to different degrees, and would be considered relative failures to their predecessors.
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I thought DS sales started to turn around in its second holiday (a few months before the DS Lite), thanks to Nintendogs being kind of a viral hit in its time along with strong games like Animal Crossing Wild World and MKDS.
 
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JoshuaJSlone said:
DS had a smaller first year than GBA or 3DS, but went on to more than dectuple it. PS3 started out with an unattractive and expensive product versus two strong competitors, had a first year under 10 million, and still managed to get the hardware somewhere near 90 million. Both I think much better fit comeback than 3DS which had one bad quarter followed by a few decent quarters followed by not much.
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I think the main effect of the price cut/Ambassador program was turning the 3DS from an outright disaster to a salvaged, moderate success, even if it did decline to half the sales of the DS. It kept Nintendo afloat during the Wii U debacle, but it didn't light the charts on fire at any point, really. In the end, the initial focus on glasses-free 3D was a pretty big mistake that cost them a lot of money, but they were able to survive that by refocusing on quality software. The Wii U would have no such salvation, it was just too expensive and unappealing as hardware.
 
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I think the top answer to this question will remain PS3. I would put 3DS at number 2, and Genesis and/or SNES at #3 and #4

Unless we are counting belated second winds like Game Boy or PSP, or big bumps after contained slower launch periods, these also happen to be the only real comeback stories in games hardware I can think of.
 
EvilChameleon said:
How about the 360? Microsoft had to spend millions on repairing bricked consoles.
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Not a real comeback, the console was already selling really well (they offered the extended warranty in 2008, it was at more than 25 million units sold already at the time this was announced, it was a big success.

They had to deal with the hardware defects, but those aren't a comeback for it.
 
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Mekanos said:
3DS had a much more appealing form factor and Nintendo's dedicated handheld line was historically much more successful than their home consoles. Also helps that 3DS eventually got Pokemon games.
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The 3DS was Wii U dire prior to the price cut. I think if Nintendo put 3D World and/or Mario Kart 8 closer to launch it would've done better.
 
Spyder said:
The 3DS was Wii U dire prior to the price cut. I think if Nintendo put 3D World and/or Mario Kart 8 closer to launch it would've done better.
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The 3DS was always guaranteed to do better than Wii U because of the presence of Pokemon, and more third party confidence in Nintendo's portable line than the console line. Even in the worst case it was going to do 40-50 million units.

Nintendo made the right decision. Wii U was unsalvageable. 3DS could be used to regroup and consolidate their strengths while they held out for the Switch.
 
3DS did so well, was great to see in the face of all the Mobile gaming = handhelds are doomed talk going around at the time
 
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Spyder said:
The 3DS was Wii U dire prior to the price cut. I think if Nintendo put 3D World and/or Mario Kart 8 closer to launch it would've done better.
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It wasn't that bad, not even close, but it was perhaps n64 bad at worst, which is still very dire news. They did everything they could to not have that be the end result because at the end of the day, handhelds have been Nintendo's bread and butter ever since the SNES ERA at latest. They really did need to save it or the company would have been in serious trouble, even if it came at the cost of the Wii U (Not that they'd ever say that officially)
 
Phantom Thief said:
The 3DS was always guaranteed to do better than Wii U because of the presence of Pokemon, and more third party confidence in Nintendo's portable line than the console line. Even in the worst case it was going to do 40-50 million units.

Nintendo made the right decision. Wii U was unsalvageable. 3DS could be used to regroup and consolidate their strengths while they held out for the Switch.
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There's no way of knowing that because Pokemon didn't come to the system for almost two years after launch, well after the system recovered. I'm not saying it was gonna sell like the Wii U, but it easily could've sold way less than it ended up doing.
 
Spyder said:
There's no way of knowing that because Pokemon didn't come to the system for almost two years after launch, well after the system recovered. I'm not saying it was gonna sell like the Wii U, but it easily could've sold way less than it ended up doing.
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Pokémon was coming to the 3DS either way. There was no other system for it to go to. And if you think that wouldn’t have sold a couple dozen million systems, then I don’t know what else to say lol
 
Yeah, I think the PS3 is the poster child for this, compare it to the Xbox One which had a similar early messaging problem, but never actually recovered.

The 3DS did good though.
 
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Mer.Saloon said:
And yes, managing to keep the company alive and profitable (which they still managed after a while) is a comeback. Especially when everything was against it to fail and drag Nintendo with the Wii U.
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I don't think I would call it a comeback when they had just come off of the Wii/DS generation. Crisis aversion at best
 
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JoshuaJSlone said:
These seem like pretty nonstandard picks, how do you figure?
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Well, Genesis basically caught no traction for two years after its launch; it was the Sonic launch in 1991 under Kalinske that gave it the second wind that would make it a household name (and similarly, that is when it took off in Europe too; meanwhile in Japan, it would take the Mega CD for it to finally start gaining some traction).

As for the SNES...

The SNES and Genesis are basically the original PS3 and Xbox 360 respectively. Genesis/Xbox 360 get an early headtstart but start slow, but thanks to savvy marketing, third party deals, and an emphasis on action and sports games, really took off, especially in western categories. SNES/PS3 got blindsided, particularly by the third party support the competition was able to muster, and while they had some quality exclusives available early on, for the first few years of their life, they struggled. However, thanks to the competition ultimately losing themselves with pointless peripherals and hardware experiments (Sega CD/32X and Kinect), they had an opening that they were then able to capitalize on thanks to price cuts and doubling down on getting some amazing exclusives out (TLOU/Uncharted/GOW3 for PS3, Donkey Kong Country/Super Metroid/Mario Kart for SNES).

By the end, the Genesis had squandered its mid-life second wind/headstart, and the SNES/PS3 slowly managed to chip away at the lead and ended the generation ahead.
 
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