Following Nintendo’s announcement that it would again cut slash prices on the Nintendo 3DS, early reports show that the initial price cut is giving the Japanese game maker a boost to its bottom line after the company’s recent first-ever quarterly loss.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata also told shareholders earlier this month he planned to slash prices on the Nintendo 3DS, which have experienced grim sales this year.

After dropping its price in the US and Japan by as much as 40 percent (depending on the country), Nintendo managed to sell over 214,000 units of the 3DS between August 8 and 14, Japanese video game magazine publishing house Enterbrain recently reported, TechCrunch said this week.

The figures represent the highest level of sales since the 3DS was launched in February. Nintendo has sold about 1.5 million 3DS units in Japan since it was launched. According to TechCrunch, the price drop (from 25,000 yen to 15,000 yen) went into effect on March 11, however, several Japan stores actually reduced the price a few days earlier.

For sake of comparison, the report pointed out Nintendo shipped over 350,000 units in the week after launch (and roughly 200,000 in the week after that), “meaning the price drop triggered some kind of second beginning in this country for the system (in May, for example, only 109,000 3DS were sold domestically).”

As TechZone reported on Aug. 1, Nintendo’s latest quarterly earnings reflected a loss of 50.2 percent compared to the same quarter last year. Gross profit ratio was 11.7 percent, a drastic drop year-on-year. The main reasons were price reductions for Wii and Nintendo DS hardware, and a declining sales ratio of Wii first-party software, which has a relatively high margin over the total sales.

Following a director’s meeting in late July, Iwata said the Nintendo senior management team will voluntarily cut their compensation, with Iwata taking the biggest hit in the form of a 50 percent reduction.

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