mhg83

Fool me once Nintendo...

Red Hood

If Nintendo wants to get on the good graces of customers, they would have re-stocked the NES Classic everywhere to make sure anyone who wants it, has it. In addition, the whole "we can't control pre-orders" is complete bullshit. Companies as big as Nintendo, who enforce street date releases on a weekly basis, can tell all the retailers who are going to sell their products, how, when and for how much they can sell it. Do they think we are stupid? If Gamestop decided to put all their NES and SNES Classic on eBay instead of selling them at the store, Nintendo lawyers will be up their asses with so many lawsuits and legal mumbo jumbo.

Seriously, fuck Reggie and fuck Nintendo.

Jay G.

Nintendo now states they'll expand production of the SNES Classic into 2018. They're also planning on bringing back the NES Classic next summer:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/...n-next-summer/
My guess is that the SNES Classic and NES Classic use basically the same board, so they'll continue SNES Classic production until demand starts to die down, then switch the line back to NES Classic and build up a stockpile of units to release in the summer.

Red Hood

Well, Reggie read my comments and responded pretty fast to them. His body is really ready.

Mike86

I had been saying all along that people were raging over nothing. I knew it had been stated that they planned to stagger releases throughout at least the holiday season. Even better that they're expanding to next year and are bringing back the NES Classic. The pre-order situation was frustrating but not exactly in Nintendo's control. People seem to like to have this angry "fuck Nintendo" attitude ready to go at the drop of a hat.

DVDTalker76

Please. This situation has been ongoing since last September - hardly a "drop of the hat" timeframe. And it's far from the first time they've mismanaged/played around with their supply.

Also, I'll say it again - what they say they will do vs. what they ACTUALLY do in terms of available stock remains to be seen.

Mike86

It's common place to see people bandwagon on finding reasons to give Nintendo shit. At times it's deserved and I agree that they didn't communicate that the NES Classic was limited but with the SNES Classic in particular people were flipping out that they couldn't pre-order day one and were definitely of the fuck Nintendo attitude. Despite the fact that they did announce before the pre-order went up that stock would be replenished throughout the holidays. It's not really their fault how retailers handle how they sell these and there was going to be a flood of people trying to pre-order day one plus scalpers. Your previous post makes it out like they've done this a ton of times. This is only the second Classic edition that they've put out. The Switch is a different situation and even that is fairly readily available.

starseed1981

It's a first world gripe but the situation is still in-excusable. What business doesn't like making money? Imagine going to your investors and saying: sorry dudes, our balance sheet could look better but our supply-chain is straight out of 1988 and we still do procurement modeling on Excel spreadsheets so........our bad.

In short, fuck Nintendo and their products. If they don't want to make them readily available for you to buy then don't bother with them.

Michael Corvin

Bandwagon? If gamers are cynical about Nintendo, it's well earned. They created this situation themselves.

milo bloom

I hate to jump on the bandwagon too, but yeah, they create their own problems. Sticking with cartridges for the N64 was not the right choice, period. The strength of their (admittedly Very Damn Good) first party titles has kept them going, but it's so painful thinking of how much more they could have been if they had included the innovations like the 3D sticks and Wii motion controls with a system that was just a tad bit more powerful so it could also run the 3rd party games that everybody wants.

They always seem to be their own roadblock to truly soaring as a gaming company. Yes, they do very well with what they have, but it just feels like putting a tad more thought into things would help them.

I was in a used movie/game store last weekend and they had a bunch of vintage stuff on the walls, including a poster for Quest 64. Including the two Zelda games and, I believe it was called Tactics Ogre, the N64 had 4 RPG-esque games. Coming off of the SNES with titles like Final Fantasy and ChronoTrigger and the like. How do you go from doing so well to stumbling so hard?

Mike86

Honestly I'm glad that Nintendo is it's own thing rather than just another interchangeable system that's trumped by PC gaming like Xbox and PlayStation have essentially become. Sure those consoles still have their exclusives but they're basically turning into glorified less powerful computers that are going to be updated every so often until Microsoft and Sony just decide they aren't worth it anymore.

I think Nintendo has earned themselves some cynicism and are behind in some respects but people seem to like to lay it on thick with them no matter what they do.

fumanstan

Yeah, don't think any of the issues people have are due to bandwagoning either. They've made a lot of glaring mistakes, but for me the positives have still outweighed the negatives which continues to make me a customer. All the NES/SNES Classic complaints have been warranted, and probably most of the Wii U issues as well.

I can see why the Switch is still divisive.

Mike86

I can more see the NES Classic complaints but the SNES Classic complaints I don't feel are warranted yet. I mean yeah so people couldn't pre-order day one. That's really not Nintendo's fault how retailers chose to distribute them and that websites were flooded with orders. Let's see what the day one in store stock is actually like and also allow them to deliver more like they have said they're going to before just calling it another botched Nintendo release.

spainlinx0

Disagree about cartridges for the N64. I can't imagine playing Mario64 with PS1 loading times. I don't think people remember how bad loading was back in those days.

jjcool

I was interested in the NES classic when I first heard about it. The bullshit with them being so scarce and dealing with the asshole resellers made me not get one and instead build a raspberri pi. Havent looked back since.

DVDTalker76

This is true to an extent, but any company mindful of their image and coming off many months of bad NES Classic press would have made a much greater effort to manage the situation. They could have worked with the retail partners to handle the preorders better, allocated more preorders to handle the "flood", Tweeted their customers the exact date preorders would go live, etc. These are all simple common-sense ideas. They did none, and predictably got themselves EVEN MORE bad press.

Carts can certainly benefit gameplay, but using them was one of the main factors in getting trounced by the PlayStation and falling from a leadership position in the industry for the very first time. This is what people usually mean about the "wrong choice", and it's really hard to argue against.

Mike86

I don't see how Tweeting out the exact time pre-orders would go live would have helped. First of all they distribute to the retailers and from that point it's the job of the retailers to get it into the hands of consumers. Retailers should do better with not putting things up at random ass times in the middle of the morning and be able to detect bots better and put in place a limit on how many people can order. Second you would have had the same situation unless the stock that retailers had was somehow higher. The only way that would have worked is if Nintendo was directly distributing which they don't do. The fact that Nintendo is coming out and saying don't spend more than the $80 price tag makes me feel pretty confident that they are intending to have enough of these to go around. The first wave of the NES Classic was a botch but I think this is a lot different and people are just ready with the pitchforks and torches to go around getting angry before they even are getting chance to see actual availability. On top of that while I get the fact that people want this it's essentially a toy. These are just commonly available games in a cute shell. The fact that people get so bent out of shape when you could get a lot of these easily on Virtual Console or whatever is kind of ridiculous. Especially given how many people probably bought them and played for a bit before putting it away. It's a cute novelty item for collectors and maybe some casuals who really wanted it but that's about all.

fumanstan

Given how quickly the stock depleted for the limited retailers that had them, it still seems like a major issue. Retailers get some blame, especially the ones that had odd hour product availability, but it seems like launch stock is an issue for an item that shouldn't take much for manufacturing.

That said, they can and certainly have a chance to make good.

DVDTalker76

It's about managing expectations and keeping communication open with your customers. One of the biggest complaints regarding the SNES preorders was that they went up with no warning, at a weird time. Quite obviously, if Nintendo prepared the fanbase with the time they were going live, that complaint is moot.

More specifically, Nintendo actually DID TWEET in early August that fans should be ready because preorders would become available "towards month's end". How do you go from that to having the preorders release in total stealth, arguably earlier than what many would consider the actual end of the month? Poor management of expectations. They themselves made their Twitter a possible source of information.. then went silent.

Again: common freakin' sense, all of it.

Mike86

Draven

They should have just done no pre-orders. Just set the day they'll be in stores and keep a steady supply coming through the holidays.

Putting up a few consoles for pre-order just makes people who aren't up in the middle of the night with a bot ready to go feel like they've already missed out.

slop101

Some hopeful signs as to it's availability is that people who work in stores (like Target, Best Buy, etc) are reporting they got in over 20 units, just as their initial shipment, while they only got around 10 total units of the NES for it's entire duration. If true, that is certainly an improvement.

Jay G.

For Best Buy, is that including their pre-orders, or is that on top of the pre-order units?

slop101

Some BBs are reporting over 100 units for their first shipment, a little more than pre-orders.

Seems like every place is getting more in just their first shipment of the SNES units than they did for all their shipped NES units.

majorjoe23

The Targets in my area are getting about 50 each.