racketboy.com

Or maybe the logistics of manufacturing pipelines to not create undue excess of inventory that you take a loss on is more art that science.

MrPopo wrote:Or maybe the logistics of manufacturing pipelines to not create undue excess of inventory that you take a loss on is more art that science.

Business degrees amirite!?

MrPopo wrote:Or maybe the logistics of manufacturing pipelines to not create undue excess of inventory that you take a loss on is more art that science.

I'll go with that one.

Markets are unpredictable and fickle, so yeah, I'd go with not over-extending. There have been excellent products that, for whatever reason, were completely ignored by the public. Better to underestimate than overestimate demand.

The Dreamcast, the Sega Saturn, and the TurboGrafx 16 were all over-produced, and look what happened to their presence in the console market? I do not want Nintendo to suffer for over-committing to the next Virtual Boy.

I'd rather them not go virtual boy either, but who are we kidding here if we don't think they could push millions more of that SNES unit (and could have with NES too) if they give it the chance. Sure some sale were legit, a good many were scalpers too, but given the scalpers sold quite a few there's clearly a desire for the units, and more than was met given the rampant anger and legitimate bitching online about it. Over-extending is bad, but under doing it and then just taking the oh well type attitude about it isn't wise either.

The Virtual Boy was a risky experiment from the get-go.
The SNES on the other hand, is a tried and true success, which is remembered fondly, has pleasant visuals, and still is a blast to play. It has aged a little better than NES games (not knocking the NES) and I only see an insatiable demand for a re-awakening for the Super Nintendo for the common household.

But its fate is sealed. In order to meet that demand, they would need to make enough excess to over stock the scalpers, which is unlikely.

nightrnr wrote:But its fate is sealed. In order to meet that demand, they would need to make enough excess to over stock the scalpers, which is unlikely.

Exactly. For every extra one SNES Mini they will produce there will be at least two scalpers ready to pounce on it.

I think they are more worried about the ability of these re-releases to take attention away from the Switch. That's why they are limited releases. They can keep the design on a shelf somewhere and break it out again if they have a slow period between hardware or tent pole software releases. They want the people who are truly motivated to be able to get them, but they don't want them to be so available that anyone and their cousin will have one, because then the market will be saturated and their new Switch software will be competing with older classic content releases.

One of the arguments content creators use to justify keeping older content unavailable is that there is a risk of good older content competing with newer content for which sales are much more important. Nintendo doesn't have the Switch VC ready, so this box fills the gap, but if everyone has a SNES or NES classic mini, nobody will buy games on the VC or subscribe to the Nintendo on-line service. So Nintendo needs to ensure that they sell enough classic mini consoles to make it worth making them, but few enough that they don't cannibalize their VC market or Switch new release market.

Nintendo isn't deliberately being a dick to anyone. They're not trying to support scalpers. They're just trying to navigate confusing waters for a company that has a very prolific and popular historical games library they need to balance against creating new content and getting new content creators on board. I'm certainly not envious of the team that has to make these decisions.

That too. Well said!