Hasn't ever tech site/video game site talked about this? Well... I might as well join in.
For the one or two of you who don't know, the NES Classic was a plug and play game console made by Nintendo that contained 30 Nintendo Entertainment System games. The console for the past few months has been plagued by supply and demand issues. To the point that when a store would get shipments it made headlines.
Last week Nintendo issued a statement to IGN stating that the last shipment (For this year, as if that means anything) of NES Classic would be arriving to stores in North America this month.
I personally believe that the reason behind the discontinuation, is that Nintendo doesn't want to de-value their IPs (Intellectual Property, not IP address.) Nintendo has shown in the past that they value there old games at the price of around 5-10 dollars. With the NES Classic they would be selling the games at 2$ each. I believe Nintendo thinks that their games are worth more then that. Despite the fact, the gaming community has been saying Virtual Console games (A way to play old games on your other consoles) have been over priced.
I also believe they don't want to hurt future VC (Which is what I'll be calling Virtual Console for the rest of this Article) sales. I believe Nintendo is scared that people will go out and by an NES Classic and not re-buy the games when they come out on the Nintendo Switch's VC. Despite the fact, for the last three consoles Nintendo has put out, people have had to re-buy them.
I personally believe though, this will hurt Nintendo's future VC sales. I'll explain this way.
Alright. Lets say, some nostalgic parents go out and buy the affordable NES Classic. When they get back, they show their kids some of the old games they played when they were kids. The kids enjoy the old games, so when they can, they buy it for their own console's VC.
I feel Nintendo is looking short term, if I'm right. And they will be hurting sales in the future.
There's one other thing I'd personally like to address. The rumor that nintendo discontinuing the console due to hacking to add more roms (Rom files are the games).
Although it is possible, I do believe they are dumb enough to do it, they could just as well patch the system. Sure the original models would still be able to add roms, but this thing would have continued to sell like crazy, making the hack-able ones the minority.
And it's not like it will stop piracy. There's all sorts of sites that allow you to download roms, that you can find with a simple google search. Plus emulators a available for every single platform out there! Even their own consoles! In fact, I believe this will drive more people then would have originally to get a Retro Pie.
I have no doubt in my mind, this stupid order came from Nintendo of Japan. Nintendo of Japan continues to show it's ignorance towards the US market every day it seems. By the way, I haven't seen that many places report this. The Famicom Classic (The Japanese Version) is only discontinued temporarily.
One last thing. If you go to ebay, you'll see, that a lot of the classics for sale, have been hacked. I'm personally worried that at some point that it'll be rare to find a non-hacked one. As person who (Although loves custom/hacked stuff) has a great appreciation for stock (Non-modded) systems... I think it would be a great shame should that happen. And there's a good chance... it could have been avoided, if Nintendo didn't discontinue it.
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