We're not talking about a home console. Has a handheld ever seen shortages? Especially the DS?

I know the DS Lite, when it first came out, was kind of hard to get at first, but then it was plentiful. Same with the DSi.

Now, the DS Phat, it was easy to get a hold of for months after it was released. It had a slows tart, but picked up once more and more titles came out for it.

I figure the games are going to be easy to find in stores, but the 3DS itself has a decent chance of selling out at first, especially because I live in a small town without a game store. I preordered on Amazon and now I'm considering grabbing Pilotwings from the store once I get the actual 3DS, based on reviews / etc.

are you seriously asking this question

Sure, why not. The Damned seems to be thinking along the same lines as me, so I'm not sure.

Ever heard of the Gameboy? Or the iPhone? Or the iPad? ;-)

If this thing is sold out for a year or so, I'm not going to be heart broken. Until I see a 2D Mario game, Mario Kart, a Metroid NOT made by Sakamoto, I'll hold off. At least within a year's time frame a few decent games will be out (just my opinion, you don't have to like it). And I refuse to plunk down $250 dollars on this thing until I can see the 3D effect for myself.

Wouldn't hold your breath for a purely 2D Mario, they haven't made one in over a decade (Unless you count those Mario Vs DK games or Yoshi Island DS). Best we will get is a 2.5D NSMB style game.

Would love to see a new one though, but preferably on a console though. I'm not a fan on the NSMB crap style. Games are OK. Its probably way cheaper to make a NSMB or Paper Mario style game than a real 2D game though

And I would say before the announcment of the NGP that the 3DS would probably be scarce, but I think the NGP is going to take some wind out of the sails. BUT maybe not, the hipster trendy people will still flock to it because "oooh 3D!11"

So it looks like the DS functionality of the 3DS is still region free at least. Thank god. http://www.destructoid.com/3ds-and-d...--195116.phtml

Um, was that supposed to be rhetorical? I've never heard about Gameboy shortages before. And why are you mentioning two unrelated electronic devices? We're talking about handheld gaming consoles here. Furthermore, maybe your retort would be more effective if you could cite a few examples of shortages of DS-related handhelds. I've never heard of that problem before, either. The only console that was hard to obtain in recent memory was the Wii.

Actually, the DS had 2 major shortages. The first was right when it launched in November of 2005. It was pretty much preorder only, but with a holiday launch like that, it's not unexpected.

The bigger shortage was in the Fall of 2006. This was, of course, the same time the Wii was released, but the DS Lite also saw its first holiday season at this point. Someone didn't expect it to be as big as it was because I remember having quite a few of them around the end of November at my GameStop location, then being sold out the following week. People were constantly asking for them. It wasn't a two-year-long "OMG I can't find one" event like the Wii, but for a couple of months, we had difficulty keeping them in stock, and around Christmas, they would sell out within minutes of getting a shipment.

Generally, Nintendo's pretty good with its handhelds as far as keeping them in stock. The GBA SP was the former portable market champion, and while we'd sell out of certain colors, we nearly always had the system in stock during its heyday. The only reason I'm not completely sold on the 3DS being readily available is that the 3D screens might reduce the number of systems available in the short term. This Christmas, if Nintendo can get some big titles out (Zelda, Kid Icarus, and they need a Mario game of some sort), the system's going to sell like crazy in all likelihood.