Nintendo 3DS Has Been Officially Discontinued

After almost a decade on the market and having sold tens of millions of units, the Nintendo 3DS is officially being retired. Production on all 3DS models has been halted, bringing to an end a run of handheld consoles that sold a respectable 75 million as of June 2020.

"We can confirm that the manufacturing of the Nintendo 3DS family of systems has ended," a Nintendo spokesperson said to GamesIndustry.biz. "Nintendo and third-party games for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems will continue to be available in Nintendo eShop, on Nintendo.com and at retail."

Introduced in early 2011 as a successor to the Nintendo DS handheld console, the 3DS used optional glasses-free 3D visuals as one of its main selling points. The system would see several hardware revisions over the years, such as the 3DS XL in 2012 and the 2DS in 2013.

The New Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL added a tiny thumbstick nub to the design in 2014 and the New Nintendo 2DS XL arrived in 2017. While its lifetime sales pale in comparison to the 154 million units that the Nintendo 2DS managed to shift over several years, the 3DS did manage to outperform Nintendo's 2012 home console by a massive margin. The Wii U only managed to sell 13.5 million units during its lifetime, and was eventually replaced by the Nintendo Switch in 2017.

A combination of both handheld and mobile gaming ideas, the Nintendo Switch has currently sold more than 62 million units globally. Last year also saw the Nintendo Switch Lite release, expanding on the Switch hardware library and providing younger gamers a cheaper console to play games on. A new console from Nintendo is also expected to launch some time in the current century.