Many Nintendo fans were frustrated with Nintendo of America for not bringing the regular New Nintendo 3DS over which has the awesome interchangeable faceplates. Damon Baker, Senior Manager in Marketing and Licensing, says the reason for not bringing the regular New Nintendo 3DS was simply down to the fact that they had to market two similar systems and that consumers could get confused with the amount of products available.

Yeah (laughs). Look, the face plates are super cool, but we’re a different market. And now we have clear differentiation between those three systems. Before, there was a very limited difference between the 3DS and 3DS XL: other than size. It was the same resolution, same functionality… now, there’s the 2DS, 3DS, and New 3DS XL, all of which have their own functionality and features. The different price points give it a clear message for consumers. The core audience… we weren’t going to win with them on that decision. But we had to think about expanding the user base, we had to be able to market it and make it easy to pick up for consumers.