Nintendo has confirmed that they will be slashing the price of the 3DS to $169.99 ($170) starting August 12th. This has been widely speculated for some time now, but it was not thought that the price cut would be that deep. Whispers indicate that Nintendo will be facing a loss on each 3DS unit it sells at this price and they will have to hope software sales help make up for it.

When released, the 3DS was selling for $250; and the fact that Nintendo has slashed the price to $170 Stateside confirms what we have known for quite a while now. The 3DS clearly is not selling as well as Nintendo had projected, and probably is faring  much worse than they had imagined.

Japan will see a price cut on the 3DS as well, which will drop the unit to about 15,000 Yen (which translates in to about $190 US Dollars). We can also confirm that Europe will get in on the 3DS price slashing. Right now, we have not been given a specific number; but we are told that the cut will be in line with what we already know about in other regions.

Software developers continue to tell us that they are backing away from the 3DS till Nintendo can move some more units, and even then they are not sure that they will be all in on developing for the platform. As one developer told us, “Even with the price cuts, I just don’t think we are going to really ramp up our titles as we originally intended, but instead we are looking at iPhone and Android as having a better market potential just by the sheer number of units sold. We will have to wait and see, but we are starting to think that the Sony Vita might do better at grabbing consumer interest, and if that happens we will likely re-focus our efforts there on that platform. ”