Months after the device’s exciting debut at the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Nintendo (PINK:NTDOY) has announced that its new glasses-free stereoscopic 3-D handheld video game player, the Nintendo 3DS, will begin selling in the U.S. on March 27 for $250.

The company said the new handheld will offer a number of its popular game franchises, including a remake of The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and a sequel to its multi-million selling pet simulator Nintendogs & Cats. The system will also see releases from major third-party game publishers like Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS) — which announced a 3DS edition of their perennial favorite Madden NFL — as well as Konami, Square-Enix, Capcom, and Ubisoft.

Nintendo is banking on the novelty of the handheld’s 3-D graphical effects and the massive success of the Nintendo 3DS’ predecessor, the Nintendo DS, to make this new device the company’s latest in a string of hardware successes stretching back to 2004.

They need it now more than ever. While both Nintendo’s home and portable consoles continue to sell well, both the Wii and the Nintendo DS have seen crushing declines in sales. This past December, Nintendo sold 2.36 million Wii systems, a number that placed the Kyoto-based company ahead of competitors Sony (NYSE:SNE) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) but still a decline of 38% from just a year earlier. With a lack of marquee software releases in the vein of successes like Wii Fit Plus and New Super Mario Bros. Wii on the horizon, it looks as though the Wii will only continue to diminish in the current gaming market.

The same can be said of the Nintendo DS. Even with a new model in 2010, the Nintendo DSi XL, the system began to flag after six years on the market. A glut of major software releases — the sole exception being a pair of Nintendo’s always-successful Pokemon games — and aging hardware saw the handheld’s monthly sales numbers fall throughout 2010, culminating in a December when sales fell by 24% year-on-year.

Market saturation, antiquated technology, and a lack of exciting software were all certainly contributing factors to the Nintendo DS’ decline over 2010, but it must be mentioned how the success of Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) portable devices hurt Nintendo’s portable gaming business. Apple sold 16.2 million iPhones and 7.3 million iPads during the last three months of 2010. The latest sales charts show that nine out of the 10 best-selling paid apps downloaded on iPhones are video games.

With those hardware numbers and a consumer base that’s fast becoming accustomed to only paying the 99 cents to $10 for most Apple-platform games, it’s possible that the business of portable video games has simply changed since the Nintendo DS became a runaway success half a decade back

Can the Nintendo 3DS help rejuvenate Nintendo? It depends on how its audience responds to 3-D. The 3DS will rely on positive word-of-mouth more than most consumer products simply because the device’s graphics can’t be replicated in advertising. (They can put game trailers in front of 3D movies, but given the declines in theater attendance, that’s not exactly a boon to Nintendo’s marketing department.) Games for the handheld are said to be priced at $40 and above, so unless people are taken with the technology, Nintendo will be hard pressed to move games in the same numbers that Rovio has with Angry Birds on Apple’s machines.

As desperate as things seem, however, Nintendo has a history of beating expectations. The original Nintendo DS was thought of as being too ugly and weird to succeed when it came out in 2004 — who has a touch screen on a gaming device? The Nintendo DS is now just a few million sales short of being the best-selling game device ever made. And remember that people scoffed when Nintendo announced the Wii in 2006 — who wants to swing their arms around while playing video games? Motion controls are now the focus of both Microsoft and Sony’s home console business in 2011.

The Nintendo 3DS needs just one game that connects with the masses to take off like its predecessor did.

As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.