Over the past few years, Nintendo has been pushing the regular sized New 3DS pretty much to the side, in favor of the XL variant. It only stands to reason that the neglected smaller version is the first to go.

The hardware manufacturer and publisher from Kyoto announced with a quiet mention on the product page of the official Japanese website that production in the country has been discontinued.

The New Nintendo 3DS launched launched back in 2014 in Japan, followed by a release in the west at the beginning of 2015.

The discontinuation of the standard model certainly doesn't mean that the era of the Nintendo 3DS is close to its end. Despite the release of the Nintendo Switch this year, Nintendo is launching the 2DS XL to replace the discontinued version, and the New 3DS XL is still in production

As a matter of fact, the New 2DS XL released today in Japan, so the discontinuation notice doesn't come unexpected. North America will get the new portable console on July 28th, losing the not exactly popular stereoscopic 3D feature, that isn't even supported in some very relevant games like Dragon Quest XI.

The whole 3DS family has shipped 66.12 million by March 31st, 2017, and Nintendo certainly doesn't seem too eager to let go.