Nintendo Drops 3DS Price to $169.99, Rewards Early Adopters with Free Games

By Hector Cortez Jul 28, 2011, 20:50 GMT

Nintendo 3DS price drops to $169.99 in the United States effective August 12.

Nintendo of America today announced plans to drop the suggested retail price of its Nintendo 3DS system to $169.99 in the United States effective August 12.

Building on the popularity of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, which launched June 19, the upcoming 3DS release calendar includes the highly anticipated Star Fox 64 3D on Sept. 9, followed by Super Mario 3D Land in November, Mario Kart 7 in December and Kid Icarus: Uprising during the holiday season.

Since Nintendo 3DS launched in the United States on March 27, more than 830,000 people have purchased one, and Nintendo is rewarding them 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.

More details about this program will be announced in the future.