Crush 3D (based off the under-appreciated PSP title) isn’t the first 3DS game to be either delayed, sentenced to a slow death, or evaporated in the wake of the console’s inability to meet Nintendo’s initial sales estimates. However, it is the first game who’s developers are willing to come right out and say that they’re waiting for more people to buy the console before they launch their game. At least, that’s what our buddies at GoNintendo have derived from this quote from Crush developer Paul Mottram -“…now we’re finding that everyone is not knowing what platform is going to succeed – we did our first 3DS title – we got Crush onto that, but we had to delay the release of that because of the success of the platform.”
Like GoNintendo, I’m guessing that Matt meant the lack of success of the platform, as it doesn’t make much sense to delay a game because it’s on a platform that’s too popular. It’s a sad, ironic situation. The less the console sells, the less likely developers are to support it, which will lead to less people buying the console, and so on. There was a similar situation with the DS when it first launched. It took a price drop, a redesign, and tons of big 1st party titles from Nintendo to get the DS kick-started into the sales juggernaut that it is today. Time will tell if the 3DS will require similar stimulus packages to get moving towards it’s predecessor’s lofty sales records.
