I thought I had heard elsewhere that it was due to the fact America has the "bigger is better" mentality, and they thought they would make a bigger profit off of just bringing the New XL over rather than both New systems, not that I'm complaining, I upgraded to a 3DS XL a while ago and love it because of its larger size. I was much more disappointed in the fact they thought selling it without a freaking adapter/charger was okay, which is why I'll be holding off on upgrading for a bit, despite the fact I could really benefit from the face tracking 3D.