Kai_Mao said:
I don't know. I'm inclined to think they really wanted the NES classic to be just a holiday item. It was just unexpected to them that there was so much demand for the product that it took a while to make more. Whether you believe that or not is up to you. Plus were retro emulators like Genesis or Atari Arcade that popular before? I can't also believe artificial scarcity when they air shipped Switch units and when there was the report of the NAND chip shortage and the battle with Apple for parts and manufacturing. |
But even the notion of a "holday item" is creating an artificial scaricty. Let's just assume they thought 1 million was more than enough. Launch day comes and units spend minutes on store shelves. Units are being sold on ebay for $300-$400. The demand becomes very obvious very quickly. What did Nintendo do about it? Order another million or so, and let them trickle out over the next 6 months, before they got tired of making them, and called it a day.
Nintendo had absolutely no interest in meeting a very obvious demand. Now the SNES classic has come and it's literally the exact same thing happening all over again. Nintendo had no reason to expect there wasn't a significant demand for the product and they've already announced regardless of how quickly it sales they won't be making a single SNES classic beyond 2017. Because reasons. They have zero interest in meeting demand at all again.
And please, spare me about any arguments about scaricity of parts, or supply chain issues or any of that nonsense. Even, assuming all of those are true, and Nintendo can't figure out how to do what every other electronics vendor manages to get around, there's literally no reason why Nitnendo can't still be putting NES classics into the market, and commit to keep doing so until they sit on store shelves. That way, the people that want them only have to be patient. Even a slow trickle would be better than nothing. But they can't do that. Because reasons.
You can bet your ass if there's a gameboy classic or an N64 classic next year, it'll be the same thing all over again.
