That price point was one of the reasons why the PSPGo failed. It was $250 and did not match up to its pricing. $250-299 is way too high for even Nintendo and this place the 3DS into the range of the HD console and way more expensive than the wii. I do not see the 3DS going over $199.99 for its price in America. Think about it, the 3DS is a handheld PS2 and Gamecube and both of those console are below $100, so the 3DS will not cost that much.

If this is definitely the case, then I fully expect Ninty's next console to start off at the $299 price.  Which means we're also going to get, hopefully, a much more tech-advanced home console next gen.

Super excited about 3DS and what Ninty has to offer as a console soon! Next e3 should be even more killer!

I have no doubt that it will launch in Japan first; that's a pretty obvious prediction. I cant see the price being that high, though. $299 would be twice as much as any Nintendo handheld has ever launched at, and even more than any console has. Also, I don't think the hardware we've seen at all justifies that price.

Realistically, I see this thing launching at $199.

We all know how accurate analysts are with Nintendo.

I think the analyst will be wrong...and is probably working on faulty information.

Nobody knows what is in the 3DS.  The analyst is probably working with rumors of the hardware being more powerful than the Wii and closer to the Xbox 360 and so forth.

I believe those rumors are actually quite non-sense.  Specially after seeing what Nintendo is displaying.  I see a launch point of $199.99 potentially less...and I don't see it releasing until next year honestly. 

I am really excited about the 3DS, but I think many have hyped it too much, and analysts making predictions of costs are crazy, because realistically we don't know anything about the system...and we won't know until it is released and someone opens it up and looks inside.  Nintendo isn't one to talk specs about hardware...it isn't important to them.

I would refuse to buy it at more than $200. While the it is more powerful, I don't see where all the extra money is going to at a higher price.

I don't know where they are getting their numbers, but I reckon someone is snorting too much powdered PSPs and mainlining rrod 360s. Historically Nintendo has always been able to keep the price low. I don't see that changing unless they want to eat a bitter pill.

I think 250 is pushing it but the highest it could be. $300 would be asking allot, yeah it delivers but damn the economy hasn't improved that much yet.


Maybe in Japan it will cost that much but they always have more expensive tech. Isn't the DS Lite still $185 or something?

The DS Lite is $129.  The DSi is $169 and the DSi XL is $189.

It may sound like an amazing system right now but I don't think the tech in it is genuinely expensive and I don't think Nintendo has a chance maintaining their current huge handheld market if they went for more than 150. The DSi and XL cost more because they're special high end systems but the mainline version can't be too expensive.

I don't think it's going to be $250, but I'd be more surprised if it were $150. It seems to me that it's a lock for $200.

I defintiely think it will be in the $150-$200 range.  Any higher and it'll just be that price until the PSP2 releases.

The price is outrages, the highest it's going to cost will be ~$184.95. Both the DS and Wii released in the US before Japan and I doubt Nintendo is going to miss the NA holiday season just to release 3DS in Japan before US. Everyone in japan isn't going to so quick in throwing out their DSs to get a 3DS so they may as well wait for more games to show off 3D.

Even 200 is too much. This is just an incremental upgrade of the DS, while the enthusiast market is a shoe-in I'm not sure how Nintendo is going to grab the expanded audience again (and without those people they'd have a shrinking userbase which is catastrophic).

Bullshit

I do think it will appear to be an incremental upgrade to the DS, unless they do something drastic with packaging.  You're average Mom will go into a Wal-Mart that Uncle Bob doesn't work at and inquire about the difference between the 200-250 dollar 3DS and the 150 dollar DSi.  The Wal-Mart clerk will then say "Well that one has 3D."  The mom could then very well say "That aint worth 100 dollars."

Unlike previous handheld generation changes, I think Nintendo should consider phasing out the DS ASAP after launch to avoid that confusion.  There won't really be a reason to keep it around given the 3DS backwards compatibility.

"Analyst" have been wrong about Nintendo a LOT this generation starting with the Nintendo DS 1. I don't think the 3DS will cost anymore then $199 at the most. It could even be less then that. They aren't about to price this higher then the Wii.

The reason to keep it around is that it has a much higher profit margin than the 3DS will have, and even without any real marketing or software support it will continue to sell for years, meaning free money for Nintendo.

**fast forward 12 months**

Kid: "Mommy, mommy, I want *this* game!"
Mom: ::looks at game:: "Only for Nintendo 3DS... wtf?!?"

**meanwhile, at Nintendo HQ**

Reggie: "Ha-ha!  Now, little Timmy's mom bought two DSes when she could have bought one.  My evil plan is working perfectly!"

Considering people lapping up the IPhone 4 and the IPad, I think Nintendo will price this higher. I don't want to pay more than $200 myself, unless it has a killer app I can't live without.

$299 my butt. Go back to analyzing your neighbor's overgrown hedges, old man.

Nintendo is not apple and that's why I love them.

I totally see it being worth $300 but I really hope they don't charge that much...  before really thinking about it much I was thinking that $200 would really fit the product all things considered and that really is the area that I hope they can keep it at...  that's about what I'd wanna pay.  but then again Apple is showing us time and time again that the average person who wants a new shiny handheld device is willing to pay multiple hundreds to get it!!

I almost fell for their "early termination" of the contract to upgrade to the iPhone 4.  But there is no point as long as the 3GS is still supported.  I may upgrade in 2 years, but not now just to get the new shiny flatter one.
The DS is a completely different idea.  For the most part, any change has been cosmetic in it.  The 3DS goes way beyond on the upgrade scale compared to what has been happening with the iPhone.  Nintendo is much better at this.  It is why I will get a 3DS around launch time.

Nintendo is a lot like Apple, much more so than you'd be willing to admit. As a huge fan of both companies, I notice the similarities often. Part of it has always been there, other parts are obvious efforts on Nintendo's part to emulate Apple.

If you throw out the 3D and the extra camera, it is only an incremental upgrade. A screen is a screen. There is no reason why that screen is so special as to jack up the price to such a degree. Even if the 3D screen was literaly two complete LCDs sandwiched together, that still wouldn't account for a $100+ price hike.

The guts and the shell of the DS has had 6+ years of technological maturity and I can't see why they couldn't pass a lot of that on to the 3DS. By Mores law it should be able to have 16 times more transistor on the same size chip for the same price let alone the other improvements that have been done like clock speed, new ways to dope and multi core.

No doubt the gaming companies would like to charge Apple prices for their wares, but time and time throughout history premium pricing for games just doesn't work. Either the consumer won't buy or hold off for the price drop or the company eats a fat subsidy in order to get the price low enough. Xbox has eaten that subsidy for 2 generations with nothing to show for it except for an online community that prides itself shouting at everybody in earshot racial slurs like they were breathing air and a negative return on investment. Now MS resort to setting up North Korean style Potekim villages in place of media briefings. Sony's singular cycle of subsidy had vaporised two complete generations of profit, killing their golden goose and golden boy in one hit. How did we laugh when we were told to get a second job to buy a PS3?

That 3D screen will create a metric ton of hype, but it worthless if no one in their usual market, which is currently everyone and anyone, can't afford to buy it. Even Nintendo needs to hit the ground running and not count on just early adapters buying on launch. That would be leaving far too many things to luck.

I don't listen to these analysts. What's the point? Their predictions are rarely correct. And remember the DS launch? It hit North America FIRST, didn't it?

Yes throw out the two main things that make this more than just an incremental upgrade.  That'll fix your argument.  Don't forget to throw out the analog "stick" and bigger top screen while you're at it.

So why don't you love Microsoft and Sony? I'm not following your logic.


Do you love me? I'm not Apple, but I use one!

A 3D screen will have a subtle effect on gameplay. One thing is does do is make a 3D game a bit more intuitive in a sense that you can see how far something is in 3D allowing you to better judge a jump. For example, instead of relying on the other way your brain judges distance based on relative size of nearby objects or in Mario games with a permanent shadow always directly below Mario.

It's not like you can literally look around the corner by twisting your head. It's very neat, but it's not an additional +100 dollar neat nor is the manufacture cost going to add even remotely that much to the price per unit.

I mean look back to the DS which had an entire screen more than the GBA and one of them which is a touch screen, both backlit. Better battery life. Some more buttons, two card slots, wireless coms. Yet they managed to keep the price as it's predecessor.

Why the hell would a wider 3D screen an extra camera and an analogue stick cause the price to blow out. It has been 6 years, surely technology has move forward from the DS since then? This isn't some limited run half bake machine that is the DSI or XL that had half a reason to exist with a fat margin. This is going to be the new base unit that is projected to be sold for the next 4-6 years.

It's incremental to the DS. If the DS was a really high end Gameboy then the 3DS would become today's DS in the same way the DS is to the GBA.

Then there is the significant graphical increase as well. Wish some people would stop purposefully ignoring things.

Well to be fair, a significant graphical increase is all part of an incremental update to some people.

So, if the additional control scheme, graphical update, processor increase, additional wireless abilities, additional internal memory, additional RAM, larger screen, 3D screen (am I missing anything) is a "incremental update", what would you expect out of a whole new system?

Hey, don't yell at me. I'm not calling this an incremental update.

However, I do think if a system ONLY includes increased horse power, it is an incremental update.  Thus, if we are arguing this ridiculousness, it should not be included in the list of reasons why it isn't. :)


In fact, I'd go as far as to say that increased horse power is the definition of an incremental update.

I"M NOT YELLING AT YOU>

Just asking the general population - what wouldn't be an "incremental update"?
Star Trek Holodeck?

Just so we're clear, the 360 and PS3 were incremental, right?

It's increment because it is expected. ie, check the never ending bitching that surrounds the Wii because the upgrade wasn't significant enough. eg, two GCs duct taped togeather.

The DS really had changed the game for handhelds. Instead of a juiced up powered Gameboy which Sony made, we got a real game changer that Sony couldn't follow.

As I said, it's incremental to the DS, but if Nintendo released the something like the PSP(The whole third pillar thing) 6 years ago and release the 3DS like they have now then it wouldn't be incremental.

However that said, if you really could turn your head to the side and still see what is on the side and behind the object, then we would have a real game changer like the GBA->DS transition. But that's ok, because not every single generation has to be so mind blowing as much as we want it to be.

I'm enjoying this.  Let's study Nintendo's home consoles and whether or not they are incremental (IN MY OPINION)

NES -> Super NES
Definitely incremental.  Only possible innovation is the addition of two more face buttons and the shoulder buttons. I personally don't think either of those count.

Super NES -> N64
Here's a funny one.  Increased horsepower, which is technically incremental as I said before, allowed for a new dimension in gameplay.  This brings it into a gray area.  Combine that with the addition of the analog stick and I would say this is definitely an innovative update.

N64 -> GameCube
Definitely incremental. Significant horse power increase and second analog stick, but still same fundamental experience.

GameCube -> Wii
Definitely innovative because of the addition of a brand new control method and digital delivery.  However, the assumed horse power increase was not really present.  This is an interesting oddity.

Wii -> Wii2
Here's to hoping this will be an incremental update.  I don't want them to revolutionize anything. I want improved horse power and online support and that's it.

That was kind of fun. Someone else should do the handhelds!

Also, as you can see in my Wii2 hopes, there is no reason to equate an incremental upgrade with being bad.  Both have their place. :)

Let's pretend the Wii 2 was nothing but a Wii QuadHD with the horsepower of 20 PS3's.  You could even use your Wii remotes with it.  Incremental upgrade?

Yes, unless that 20 PS3 power facilitated a significant change to gameplay like my N64 going into 3D example.

The 3DS is like the Gamecube to the DS's N64. That's a sustaining innovation, not terribly useful for grabbing more of the market. Maybe I'm overly skeptical because of the whole not-having-depth-perception deal but 3D doesn't strike me as a feature that will really increase the appeal of the 3DS beyond those people who would have bought it as a 2D system as well. Compare what the 3DS adds to the DS to what the DS added to the GBA. The DS added the touch screen that enabled wholly new genres that really pushed the system's appeal way beyond the core. Sure, we're all interested in the 3DS because to us the upgrades to processing power and the analog stick and whatnot are good reasons but to the expanded audience the DS reached those won't be compelling reasons, their games don't need much processing power or 3D.

I used the word incremental as meaning a sustaining innovation but either way to me it means the new device doesn't enable many games that the old one didn't already.

Another thing to note about those Nintendo consoles is that their sales constantly went down until the Wii :P: .

I think the 3DS is innovative because of the addition of the gyros and the analog control, which are both brand new when it comes to Nintendo's handhelds.

I'm reserving judgement on the 3D, but I am still expecting to be underwhelmed by it.

If the installing games thing actually ends up being true, that's another huge innovation in my book.

If it only had another 100-200 pixels in horizontal resolution, then it would be all that and a bag of chips.

But it technically changes the way games are viewed visually now.  I'd say that's pretty innovative, especially without glasses.

The Innovation isn't technically the 3D aspect, but the thought of doing so without the need of glasses or something extra whatever to create the effect. It's true that every system upgrade isn't innovative (I like the system breakdown earlier), but lest we forget, even if the 3D doesn't present significant changes for gameplay, you have the added motion sensor, and gyro sensor and front facing cam with the ability to recognize face change and other movements a la the eye toy.

When all of this is combined with the 3D aspect it becomes pretty innovative, and the analog slider is a must to help navigate most of it with ease.  It is a situation where one thing alone isn't innovative, but the combination of technologies become an entirely different thing altogether.

however everyone are making great points.

While I'm confident in Nintendo's pricing structure (this being the same Nintendo that slashed the price of N64 before it launched so go them), I'm weary that they'll get greedy. See, Nintendo doesn't need to make money selling hardware. They just do because right now, they can. They could have lowered the price ages ago, but instead of passing the savings of old technology onto the consumer, they're pocketing it. It hard to blame them. It's nice and all, but they make most of their money publishing games and on licensing fees (please don't ask me to dig up the old EGM where I read that). Nintendo is cleaning up so well and I fear that's getting to their head. People are still willing to pay $129 for a DS Lite despite how dated the technology is. I can't even imagine how much money they're actually making on each one sold in 2010. My hope is that Nintendo bites the bullet and decides to sell 3DS at a price where they break even on hardware rather than go for the extra profit margin. Ultimately, they'll sell more and the say $50 people aren't spending on hardware, they may spend on software which is Nintendo's bread and butter anyway.

One of the things Satoru Iwata mentioned during Nintendo's E3 show is that they have had this planned out for the past two years, "and were waiting until the technology was cheap enough to release cost effectively"

I don't believe they will go over $199, but I seriously doubt it will be less than $149. mostly because of this statement, and the constant mantra of remaining affordable to the masses, Nintendo knows very well they cannot jump the price on 3DS, plus with IPhone4 impending in the handheld market.  DS held off PSP not only by unique gameplay, but also by pricing. If Nintendo wants to be sure no one steps into the handheld market and takes over the way Playstation did the console market at one point, they know to keep the price low. They've already admitted to waiting until the tech was not only right, but also affordable, and that is a savings you pass on to your consumer.

PS3 tech was not affordable at release hence the astronomical price and even more loss, same with X360, where teh tech was not only unaffordable, it was not ready either, hence the frequent rrod's lol

I've been hoping for years for a new Kid Icarus title and 3DS is still not a day one purchase for me, regardless of price. The last day one purchase I made was DS Lite and that almost doesn't qualify. So really, the only day one purchase I ever made was Gamecube. I lined up at Toys R Us. Point being, regardless of what 3DS launches at, I don't know if I can justify it. Kid Icarus and a bunch of remakes. Ehh.... I can wait and by the time some phenomenal games come out, the price will probably drop or failing that, 3DS Lite will be ready.

I'm predicting a $179.99 MSRP.

Even if the DS had no touchscreen or dual screens or microphone it was clearly a successor to the GBA due to the jump up in hardware specs.  And this is the same jump.  The Wii approach is completely unique.  No hardware ever was replaced by something that was such a small hardware jump.

3D might as well not be here.  "Hey, look there's Gamecube visuals on a portable!"  There, that's the jump.  Clearly a standard follow-up.

They really had no choice, Sony had cut the price of the PS1 from $300 to $200 at E3 (despite the fact that it was still a huge seller), so it would have been stupid to release the N64 at $250.

Most analysts seem to think it will be $200-$250 (I haven't seen any say $300). I don't see this being more than $200.

oohhboy, have you even looked at any screenshots of games? It is far more than a "incremental" upgrade considering they look better than even the best GameCube games.

Adrock, we don't know what any of the launch games will be, so why are you so cynical that you think it will be filled with remakes? Besides, remakes can be great (depending on the game they are a remake of).

Do you have sales numbers for that? The only thing I could ever find is a blurb in Nintendo Power which states it took the PlayStation 15 months to sell its first million systems. I wouldn't call that a huge seller.

With all do respect to this analyst (not that I respect analysts), I'm sticking with my prediction of $179.99.  If analysts are supposed to recognize trends, why do they skip the history of handheld domination by affordable Nintendo platforms?  This isn't Sony with the PS3.

With the DS, the tapping of new markets was evident: mature adults, female gamers, etc.  But I would argue that the games that appealed to these customers could have been possible without the touchscreen.  Brain Age, Nintendogs - these games could have been made for PSP, and wouldn't be much different.  Sure the touchscreen made them more accessible, but it wasn't the reason they sold.  What more could you add to 3DS that would enable non-possible games?

So while I agree the 3DS is clearly a sustaining development, the potential to further expand the market exists if the right software is made.

I have a few theories on the reasons we're getting the higher estimates:

-3D is still very new, so it's difficult to estimate the costs involved.
-Nintendo may have impressed people so much that they upped their estimates based on what they feel the system is worth.

As has been said, Nintendo prices their systems to make a profit on the hardware. The only way I can see them going above 200 is if they had to price it there to make a profit, which would run counter to some of what they said about how they chose the technology to use.

I'm going with $200, why.  To finish off the PSP, yeah the PSP isn't much of a threat but it still has 30 pecent of the sales and nintendo's going want to nip them in the bud once and for all. 

Me, I'm somewhat excited by this--namely the lineup that interests me the most.  New Kingdom Hearts (or a remake who knows), DQ game, and a FF RPG that's not a spinoff. 

The PlayStation launched in December 1994. It started out slow in Japan, even being outsold by Saturn, but it grew over time and was an immediate hit in North America. By March 1996 (six months after its NA launch), it had reached 1 million in North America and that number would grow to 2.3 million in NA (and 8 million worldwide) by the time the N64 launched. Sony could barely keep up with demand even at the $300 price point. The price cut also pretty much killed Saturn's chance of catching up since Sega's big announcement was that they were dropping the price from $400 to $300 (even though they were still losing money at $400, but they felt pressured to match PS1's price).

Source?

Um, no it wasn't.  The DS was supposed to be the third pillar to sell alongside the GC and GBA.  Nintendo go really lucky in that it took the place completely of the GBA, especially in Japan.  The next Gameboy was actually scrapped because the DS sold so well.  The GBNext was going to be around as powerful as the PSP but because the DS did so well, they scrapped it and the GB name completely.

Analysts may consider 250-300 a bargain because they're paid fairly well. Most people aren't.

I disagree, the touch screen's accessibility was a major part in creating the games, Brain Age's tests wouldn't work if you had to manually select letters, Nintendogs was huge because of the direct interaction using the touch screen and Professor Layton's puzzles often require the tap-anywhere nature of the stylus. Picross 3D would be clunky to an epic degree without a touchscreen.

I'm expecting $180-$200, because as the DSi has shown, people are willing to pay that much, unfortunately. I'm hoping it is $150 though, like the DS was. Though it should really go back to $100. No handheld is worth more than that.

I don't think 180-200 is likely, the DSi had a massive established library and was aimed at higher-end users without having to worry about cutting lower end people out of the market since the DS Lite was still available.

Something to keep in mind - *if* this thing is going to launch by March 2011 and all.

Where will the 3DS fit in with the current DS models and the current pricing structure?

I assume, similar to Japan, the DS Lite will be discontinued and the DSi units will see a price drop.

So, if the DSi drops to $130 and the DSiXL drops to $150, would the 3DS launch between the two?  Higher than the XL?  Would the DSi units drop lower than that?

It really depends on what it costs Nintendo to make the thing. They'd charge $150 if they could make a profit on it at that price; I'm just not sure that they could. Unfortunately, we're not going to know what it costs Nintendo until after it launches and someone tears it down and figures it out, so we can't factor that into the prediction.

im prediciting sub $200 with price cuts a-plenty for DS handhelds. It seems very un-mass market priced to be over $200 when the original came out for $149. At $299 its should be somewhere inbetween xbox1 and ps3 graphics..leaning towards ps3. Expect the next PSP to have ridiculous graphics and a 2 hour battery time and a $350 price tag.

One of the best books ever written about the history of video games, The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven Kent (http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-History-Video-Games-Pokemon/dp/0761536434).

UncleBob, I don't recall Nintendo discontinuing the DS Lite anywhere. It's still being sold in Japan.

Perm, some of the games do look better than Xbox games; not quite Xbox 360, but better than the Xbox.

Maybe it wasn't discontinued... It was my understanding that, during the latest round of markdowns, it was priced at "Retailer's Choice" meaning that Nintendo planned to discontinue it.

The point is that they did and they understood why. That's at least a $50 profit Nintendo essentially gave back to consumers in order to stay competitive. I'm merely suggesting that Nintendo break even on setting the MSRP on 3DS. Keep the price of the hardware as low as possible without taking a loss.

I won't presume that you keep track of my other posts, but I mentioned in another topic that there are only 2 games that would entice me to buy a 3DS at launch without question: New Super Mario Bros. 3 (preferably based on Super Mario Bros. 3) and a new 2D Metroid. Since neither of those games were unveiled at E3, I can only assume they aren't in development let alone coming out at launch. I just don't have the time to play videogames like I used to. I'm willing to wait and see what the future holds for the platform.

And you're right, remakes can be great, but I'm pretty sure I still own every game I would even want a remake for so remakes aren't at the top of my must-buy list and certainly will not convince me to buy new hardware for. In fact, there's only one remake I'd be absolutely buy and that's Final Fantasy VI. Maybe Final Fantasy IX, but most definitely VI.

Honestly I don't think it costs much more than the DS did to make at launch. Really, how much has changed? The chipsets aren't cutting edge so most likely not terribly expensive and I doubt the screen is really difficult to manufacture.

Lol I expect it to launch 2010 in Japan for 229
then in U.S. For 200 in march.  My top end is 229
U.S.  I didn't get a dsi cause it wasn't big enough
up-grade. And no exclusive games(not counting
download).  But 3DS is a big jump and will get my
money.
So SNES to N64 is  up grade cause 2D to 3D .
But ds/dsi to 3DS isn't  because why stereoscopic
3D doesn't count.  Lol

There are at least of couple of retail games that are DSi-exclusive.

Yea it was. I remember these very arguments years ago. Anyone who thought that 3rd pillar nonsense was true just could not see Nintendo covering their butts just in case. I remember people talking about the next Gameboy like there was really some substance to it. The DS was obviously the only true succesor in the works, and if it failed Nintendo would have been heart broken and moved into the animated movie industry. The jump in power along with backwards compatibility should have let anyone know that the Game Boy name was done for, and that this was our Gameboy next! 

No way was the NES -> SNES an incremental evolution.  It's true that the biggest addition to the SNES was increased horsepower, but the gap between the two systems was so large that it doesn't classify as incremental. 

MODE 7 GRAFIX

It was also the first Nintendo system to use somewhat polygonal graphics.

StarFox, remember?  Fantastic game.

Hey don't be poking fun at Mode 7.  I'd like to see someone make F-Zero, Super Mario Kart or Pilotwings on the NES.

Hell I have a hard time imagining very many of the best SNES games, both first and third party, being doable on the NES.  It was a big leap hardware-wise.  It was a very conventional evolution though.  They weren't reinventing the wheel with it.  But I think that games speak for themselves.  You can make great innovative games with a conventional upgrade.

I wasn't poking fun, I was pointing out the improvement.

Mode7 games were not possible on the NES and anything even attempting the same effect would just look stupid.

Mach Rider was what a Mode 7 game would look like on the NES. And that game is absolutely no fun.

Super Mario World would have been so different on the NES: It wouldn't have had Yoshi! Miyamoto expressed that he wanted to have Mario ride a dinosaur in SMB3, but it wasn't possible due to the limitations of the NES.

hahah, Mach Rider will Return! I will make it happen! It will be nothing like that shitty arcade game though, except the new arcade version, which will include a bike and a gun.

He was also wrong, considering that the Chinese made an NES port of SMW including rideable Yoshi.

I'm sure he meant it wouldn't work well, or the way that he wanted it to, not that it couldn't be done at all. Plus, NES hardware changed over time, becoming more and more capable, so perhaps it was possible after SMB3 was created. When SMB was released, the screen scrolling in only one direction was a hardware limitation.

Which came out years later (so they had time to fiddle around with it) and not even the full game (the pirate game is only 19 stages, compared to 76 from the real one). At the time I think it wasn't possible to do it.

The pirate game actually has most, if not all of the stages, but they got lazy and didn't clean up the other stages and make them accessible from the map.  It was possible using the SMB3 chip; Miyamoto or whoever was programming just hadn't figured out how to do it.  For instance, Adventure Island II (1990) also had rideable dinos.

I doubt it would have worked as smoothly as it does on SNES, at the least.

Maybe it's a different one, but the pirate one I was looking at only had a handful of hidden stages and those were mostly unplayable due to glitches and/or missing stuff.

Anyways, I am sure Miyamoto would have been able to get Yoshi in eventually, but Nintendo didn't want to keep delaying the game just for that since they were already working on the SNES and knew it would be much more powerful.

I'm with Pale. Graphics = incremental. It's the processing power that made it surpass incremental and pushed it towards revolutionary, but I think in all, it's right in the middle. I mean, SMB3 was done on the NES and SMW was done on the SNES. Apart from some cleaner sprites, they look exactly alike. But where it makes a difference is processing power for games like Starfox, Mariokart, and F-Zero.

Anyway, the Analcysts are fucking dumbasses. There is no way in hell it's going to cost more than $200 bucks. And if it does, it'll include a game or some other free shit to warrant the cost.