MINI-NES Classic Edition

[Derwin0]

Cant wait to play some Donkey Kong

 

[yourbeliefs]

The console is going to have different display modes as well as some sort of save state implementation.

http://www.geek.com/games/nintendo-...-several-display-modes-instant-saves-1665082/

 

[yourbeliefs]

Japan is getting a Mini-Famicom (Japanese version of NES, AKA The Family Computer.) They will be getting different games. There's some overlap.

 

[yourbeliefs]

The NES Mini has gone on sale today. Expect to be close to your console while you play:



And to compare to the original controllers.

 

[Stargazer]

Is it just me or does it look like the one on the left dont have the cord extended all the way out but some of it behind the unit.

 

[king3pj]

Is it just me or does it look like the one on the left dont have the cord extended all the way out but some of it behind the unit.

That second picture shows the Famicom. In Japan they had the Famicom instead of the NES so now they are also getting a Famicom Classic over there instead of an NES Classic. Apparently the controllers on the Famicom were permanently attached so they did the same thing with the Classic version. It looks like the cables are attached to the back of the Famicom so they lose a couple more inches of cord length by having to go around the console. I'm pretty sure that cord you are seeing behind the console is just the cord for the second controller which is snapped onto the right side of the console.

The benefit to the Famicom Classic is that they get 2 controllers by default while we have to buy the second one. The downside is that they are permanently attached so they can't buy cable extenders like we can.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Teardown of the new NES

 

[yourbeliefs]

If you're desperate to have a NES Classic sooner rather than later and don't want to deal with scumbag scalpers, Walmart will have limited supplies available each day until Friday at 5pm EST daily.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...romises-NES-Classic-Stock-Every-Day-This-Week

 

[Ronnie-]

If you're desperate to have a NES Classic sooner rather than later and don't want to deal with scumbag scalpers, Walmart will have limited supplies available each day until Friday at 5pm EST daily.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...romises-NES-Classic-Stock-Every-Day-This-Week

Good luck with that. Site crashed in half a second. When it came back up a minute later it was "out of stock".

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

 

[yourbeliefs]

Just in case there was any doubt, yes, Nintendo is up to their typical bullsh*t of understocking their products to artificially drive up demand (NSFW language in video, which has an obscene title, hence why it's behind a link)

And in worse news, eBay is actually PROMOTING scalping of the damn thing by offering high price sales guarantees, meaning that if you put it up for the inflated price that they suggest, and your product doesn't sell at that price, they refund you the difference in eBay credits!!

 

[Ronnie-]

Yeah, the way this has been handled has nearly completely killed my enthusiasm and interest in getting one.

 

[king3pj]

Just in case there was any doubt, yes, Nintendo is up to their typical bullsh*t of understocking their products to artificially drive up demand (NSFW language in video, which has an obscene title, hence why it's behind a link)

And in worse news, eBay is actually PROMOTING scalping of the damn thing by offering high price sales guarantees, meaning that if you put it up for the inflated price that they suggest, and your product doesn't sell at that price, they refund you the difference in eBay credits!!

I know that Nintendo is famous for creating artificial scarcity but I highly doubt that they meant to make it this much of a problem. Sure artificial scarcity drives up demand to an extent but does that really matter if your product isn't available to buy on the biggest retail day of the year? Think of the millions of dollars they lost in sales by not having anything available to buy on Black Friday. I fully believe that artificial scarcity was planned at launch because this is Nintendo. I don't think they purposely tanked their own holiday sales though.

I think it is more likely that they simply underestimated demand. When you look at the way their last console sold it's not hard to see why they would be conservative on their sales estimates. The last thing any manufacturer wants to do is make way more product than there is demand for. On top of the extra labor and parts that goes into making extra units you also have to pay to store them somewhere. If your supply ends up being significantly higher than the demand you end up having to discount your product so you can get it out of your warehouses and retailers don't want a ton of extra units taking up space on their shelves either.

Ideally a manufacturer wants to keep their excess stock as low as possible while still being able to meet demand. If you greatly underestimate that demand it can take a while to catch back up, especially if they have to hire a lot more employees and buy more machinery and facilities.

 

[Derwin0]

And if you overestimate the demand, you wind up with a surplus of inventory and a big loss (ie, the Wii-U).

Nintendo didn't know exactly how well this would sell. Could have been another disappointment, due to the flood of NES clones on the market, just look at Genesis version, tons of them gathering dust on shelves, and they even have a cartridge slot. Instead they played it safe.

 

[Ronnie-]

A blind man could see that this would sell well though. Nostalgia factor is through the roof. I can see being conservative, but this seems beyond that.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I'm sorry, but you'd have to crazy to not think that this thing would sell well. You have a cute little Nintendo that plays 30 great games that comes out to less than $2 a game that plugs right into your television. The biggest buyers of video games now are people who grew up on the NES, and those people have jobs and disposable income as well as children of their own, so they want to A: Relive playing those classic games, and/or B: Introduce and play these games with their own kids. Now, someone like me has no use for this, mainly because I've been using emulation for over 10 years now. I have access to every NES game ever made and I can use whatever DirectInput (read: Xbox/Sony/99% of USB) controller I want. But the VAST majority of consumers don't feel like downloading an emulator and then downloading every individual game they desire, or set up torrenting and download one of those mega-packs that have every NES game ever made in them. This is a simple, stupid solution of just plugging in 2 cables (3 if you count the controller) and hitting the power button and you got great nostalgia for $60.

Also, I'm willing to bet a million dollars that the flop of the Wii U had NOTHING to do with Nintendo making some sort of a decision to limit production of this. First off, it's MUCH cheaper to produce a NES Classic than a Wii U. As you saw in the teardown video above, all the NES Classic is is plastic mold containing 1 circuit board and some connectors to the controller ports. I can't imagine it costs more than $10 to manufacture one of these things. Secondly, the Wii U failed because the vast majority of consumers had no idea what the hell it even was because Nintendo marketed it so poorly. Some thought it was just some sort of new controller, so you can imagine their shock when they saw that it was a whole new system priced at over $300.

Overall this just reeks of Nintendo pulling another d*ck move to consumers. They did it with the Wii and the Amiibos, and people seem to just let them get away with it because they're Nintendo. They would have made a KILLING if they had produced adequate supply in time for Black Friday/Cyber Monday. I mean I suppose they have December to try and redeem themselves, but they had no business (no pun intended) sending out single digit numbers of units to all these retailers.

 

[king3pj]

I'm sorry, but you'd have to crazy to not think that this thing would sell well. You have a cute little Nintendo that plays 30 great games that comes out to less than $2 a game that plugs right into your television.

I agree that it was highly likely that NES classic would sell well but how many units is selling well? They have to make an educated guess at a sales total and manufacture towards that. You can't just decide that this is probably going to sell well and have millions available for launch for all the reasons I mentioned in my last post.

Overall this just reeks of Nintendo pulling another d*ck move to consumers. They did it with the Wii and the Amiibos, and people seem to just let them get away with it because they're Nintendo. They would have made a KILLING if they had produced adequate supply in time for Black Friday/Cyber Monday. I mean I suppose they have December to try and redeem themselves, but they had no business (no pun intended) sending out single digit numbers of units to all these retailers.

But what would they gain from this? Again, I agree that they have a track record of artificial scarcity and I agree that they probably planned on creating some of that at launch to drive demand up. I just don't see what they would have to gain from purposely refusing to sell their product on the biggest shopping day of the year. The demand was already as high as it's ever going to be and if they would have had one available for everyone who wanted to buy one on Black Friday they would have made tons of money.

I think they estimated how many units they would sell at launch and planned their production around that number (with some early scarcity built in). I think the actual demand was probably quite a bit higher than they estimated and built for. Now they are trying to catch up so they don't completely miss out on the holiday sales rush even though they already missed the biggest day. Unfortunately increasing production might not be as simple as flipping a switch. They might have to hire hundreds of additional employees, buy additional factory equipment, and maybe even additional factory buildings. They also have to decide whether the cost of doing all that is even worth it when demand will probably decrease significantly after Christmas.

I just think it's much more likely that the people in charge of coming up with sales estimates were pretty far off base than it is that Nintendo made a conscious decision that they only wanted to sell a small fraction of what they could have this holiday season.

 

[yourbeliefs]

As Jim mentions in the video, what Nintendo is doing is exactly what Toy companies do all the time, where some toy is christened the "toy" of the season and then consumers have this incredible desire to get it, even if it isn't that great. It happened with the Tickle Me Elmo, Furby, Shopkins, etc. Nintendo markets their electronic like they're toys to artificially drive up demand when there's already high demand, which in turn also makes it even HARDER to get the NES Classic because then it becomes target #1 for scumbag scalpers and resellers. Hell people even have BOTS set up to scour these stores and automatically purchase them.

But okay, let's just say that Nintendo were not being d*cks and instead actually misjudged demand. Whoever was in charge of that should be walked out into public like Cersei Lannister with an old woman hitting a bell saying "SHAME!" throughout the streets. I mean this isn't slightly misjudging demand, this is REALLY misjudging it. Anyone who knew ANYTHING about the gaming market knew this thing would sell like crazy, and I'm sure retailers knew this would sell great as well. You don't think that Walmart, Amazon, Target, etc didn't know that this would sell great and didn't press Nintendo that they would need a lot of copies to fulfill demand? Basically, if EVERYONE KNOWS that this thing is going to have high demand EXCEPT the company that is selling it, then said company doesn't get to fall back on "Oh we had no idea this would be so popular!" At that point they're either insanely stubborn or feigning ignorance, and neither practice deserves excusing.

Again, as I said this doesn't affect me personally, but I know it affects a LOT of other people, and no possible explanation can put Nintendo in a good light.

 

[Derwin0]

Sorry, but I don't blame Nintendo for playing it safe. They've gotten burned in the past of overestimating and being stuck with excess inventory.

Not to mention, it takes a lot of production capacity to build all of them at once (tooling a line does not come cheap). Plus, if you do that, then you wind up with excess build capacity due to overtooling a line.

They made a decision to release on a certain date, and thus produce what they could before that time using a reasonable amount of factory tooling and capacity.


Sounds more like people are butt hurt because they couldn't get one on day one due to speculators and scalpers.

 

[Kraven]

Sorry, but I don't blame Nintendo for playing it safe. They've gotten burned in the past of overestimating and being stuck with excess inventory.

Not to mention, it takes a lot of production capacity to build all of them at once (tooling a line does not come cheap). Plus, if you do that, then you wind up with excess build capacity due to overtooling a line.

They made a decision to release on a certain date, and thus produce what they could before that time using a reasonable amount of factory tooling and capacity.


Sounds more like people are butt hurt because they couldn't get one on day one due to speculators and scalpers.

I can agree with this.. BUT Nintendo is also enjoying the buzz of having a sold out product as well.

I remember when the WII first came out. Couldnt find them anywhere... people lined up for hours at ToysRus and/or Best Buy on Saturday mornings hoping to get one of the 10 they had in stores. IIRC, one guy who got a voucher while waiting immediately turned around and was asking 300$ for it.

My case it took 3 months to get one and it was by fluke.

 

[Derwin0]

And on the flip side, the Wii U came out, and flooded the channels.

I personally refuse to pay a markup, and will just wait until I come across one a normal price.

In about 3-4 months, the mini-nes will be everywhere gathering dust on shelves.