It also helped that Mario Kart 7 was rather good - perhaps not 'best in series' level, but definitely fun either locally or online. Suddenly a handheld that was initially perceived to be too expensive and lacking in killer apps was neither of those things, and a steady revival towards respectability was underway which would eventually result in one of Nintendo's most enviable software libraries. While Monster Hunter 3 G contributed handily to a late-2011 comeback for 3DS in Japan, the games that joined the price cut for a big push in the West were Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7. It was all very dramatic when you consider that Nintendo was coming off the runaway success of the DS and Wii era, and when compared to today's monster profits in the single-platform Switch era. The portable endured a poor launch in March 2011, and by that year's Fall / Autumn Nintendo's executives took a major pay cut, the cost of the system was reduced significantly, and early adopters - or 'Ambassadors' - were given 20 free retro games as an apology (10 NES titles that would later come to 3DS Virtual Console, and 10 GBA games that were never officially available on the system by any other means). First of all, the name - it was the first entry in the series to introduce a number, which seemed a little random back then but certainly established a shift for the brand. Let's hit pause and, first of all, remind ourselves a little about Mario Kart 7. It taught Nintendo that, sometimes, you just have to update a game. Yet as Mario Kart 7 reaches its 10th anniversary we remembered a particular part of that game's rather humorous and, in hindsight, important legacy. Its record is far from spotless, but compared to the majority of developers a version 1.0 first-party release from Nintendo will likely be a relatively smooth experience. There are some rare releases even today that receive either no updates or very few - unless there are frequent DLC additions - and one of Nintendo's selling points is its focus on detail and quality when it comes to shipped games for the most part, the company releases titles that are pretty much ready-to-go and not "wait for a few updates to fix things" experiences. We're in a gaming era of plentiful patches, where it's common for games to get frequent updates starting on day one.
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