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Comment by socalnate1 | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo makes the most confusing business decisions.

This reminds me of Disney releasing one of their classic films for a limited time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault)

In the future if Nintendo were to re-release the NES Classic (or a SNES Classic) the demand, hype and publicity would be astronomical.

> This reminds me of Disney releasing one of their classic films for a limited time

I believe that decision almost killed Disney—they stopped making new films, and they made their classic films difficult or impossible to come by, and ended up with kids that didn't know or care who any of their characters were. I'm glad they turned that one around.

The only possible explanation I can think of is that a replacement product is in the works (e.g, wider game selection, SNES support, downloadable games, etc). Otherwise... WTF.

They really have the worst supply chain out there. A bunch of people I know wanted this and/or the Switch. These are casual gamers who may not care later.

To be fair to Nintendo, the Switch was their fastest-selling console ever over the first few days; that level of demand is the best/worst case scenario at the same time, and you can only produce more consoles so fast.

They knew what the demand looked like months in advance from preorders. And now it's more than a month past release and they still can't keep stores supplied. At some point, the difference between "we're so surprised!" and "our logistics suck" kind of disappears.

I think you might be underestimating the front running required to make hardware at scale. There isn't just a "build more faster" switch they can flip.

There is, however, a "Release later to ensure we have some stock backfilled" option.

This isn't Nintendo's first super-popular product after all, at some point it boils down to them not caring enough to invest in their supply chain to keep enough stock on the shelves. Stores receiving five consoles at a time is a joke.

Yup. This is one of those "9 women having a baby in 1 month" things.

All Nintendo needs to do is make playing older games as easy as opening up Emuparadise and clicking a few buttons.

High prices, not being able to play some SNES games available for the Wii on the 3DS (wtf, just let play FFVI on the go), poor library (I know, licenses, but still), etc. make feel like they don't care.

That product is called the Switch.

The Switch has a lesser appeal than a $50 box that has a lifetime of nostalgia.

Not for everybody, and not for most people I'd wager.

The Switch doesn't have any NES or SNES games for it at all.

*yet

I would be shocked if the Virtual Console wasn't running on the Switch by the end of the year.

rumor mill suggests as early as this summer

I know right?! Either that, or they know something I don't. They could probably make a lot more from selling these. It's like they don't need it and want to keep it limited in numbers, which doesn't rhyme with how many original NES' were sold and how OK they were with that. :)

Or maybe they want to start selling NES titles on the Switch and they don't want to compete with themselves or something?

You'd expect some virtual console on the Switch but that is still missing the point of the NES Classic, which is cheap enough to be an impulse buy or a gift, and cashes in on the nostalgia of an entire generation.

I know a lot of people who haven't played video games since they were kids who wanted the NES Classic, it has a unique appeal.

> they know something I don't

Am I weird for thinking that it's very likely that an entire company with over 100 years of experience _does_ know something that you don't?

Institutional knowledge gets lost everytime an employee dies or leaves the company.

Tell me about it! Squaresoft is no longer the company that made the great games of my childhood (SNES era). All of the key talent that went into those games has left the company.

Well, they can think they know something that isn't true anymore. I've seen it before at companies, the circumstances leading up to their success are often repeated as sacrosanct steps not to be questioned.

If only it worked that way. Besides, Wii U anyone? They have plenty of recent fumbles we could bring up.

Anytime I see Switch mentioned, I think about nintendo's ol' switcheroo 22 years ago that ultimately outdid nintendo.

Are you referring to the Pokemon Company?

More likely the Sony drive for SNES that they scrapped and Sony made into the playstation.

Yes, it's my favorite story.

tl;dr: Sony gets backstabbed by Nintendo, proceeds to destroy them in their own staple industry for the next few decades by releasing Sony Playstation.

It's important to understand that some business decisions aren't based off of money. Sometimes they are based on the emotions of the people working at the company.

Like a TV network cancelling a series with good ratings because an executive wants to put something else in it's slot to further his legacy.

Or a company hiring and promoting someone unqualified because they remind the director of themselves earlier in life.

Or a game company ending a successful series because the head of software was tired of making it.

I've always heard of Nintendo that they only cared for the Japan market and that all else was simply an happy side effect.

Releasing it or discontinuing it?

Discontinuation makes sense, because that console was a dead end, you couldn't add more games etc, so IMO it was more of a novelty.

As for releasing, it would be better if they make it not a dead end product.

Someone mentioned here that many chips using there were already EOL when it was released, so maybe this was a creative way to get rid of some components and make money out of them that otherwise they would throw away?

> Discontinuation makes sense, because that console was a dead end, you couldn't add more games etc, so IMO it was more of a novelty.

That doesn't make much sense. Not everyone who currently wants one has got one. They're absolutely flying off shelves. You wouldn't discontinue something like that because it's "a novelty."

You would, if you would run out of components to build them.

All I'm saying is that when they came up with it, they planned it to be a dead end, e.g. fixed number of games, no ability to purchase games (either physically or download from internet), build using components that are EOL and no longer being produced...

A "novelty" with massive demand and no supply. I don't get your logic.

I think they'll bring it back later for maximum kitsch value like McDonald's does with the McRib.

Exactly this.

Nintendo and Twitter are extremely similar. Twitter lucked into an AAA product, and management hasn't been able to leverage it to anything like the Facebook competitor it should have been.

Nintendo lucked into hiring a game design genius (Miyamoto) who also happened to be a great mentor and producer, meaning they've had a steady stream of AAA games for 30+ years.

If either one of these companies had great CEOs, they would easily be dominating their respective industries.

Nintendo is a 127 year old company. Pretty sure they didn't stagnate for 100 years before finally hitting their stride with Miyamoto.

70 years of being a family-owned, regional playing-card company is pretty much the definition of stagnation.

Hiroshi Yamauchi deserves credit for having the vision to expand into electronic games, but nothing they did before Miyamoto could truly be considered a market-shaping event.

Other than switching to electronics and hiring Miyamoto, Yamauchi was a middling CEO at best.

Super Mario is one of the most recognizable characters in the world. The NES sold 60 million units. The SNES sold 50 million units.

If a great CEO had been running Nintendo at any point since ~1983, Nintendo would be Disney right now.

Nintendo has had several great CEOs who are no longer with us.

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