R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

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BanjoPickles
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R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

Postby BanjoPickles » April 13th, 2017, 4:21 pm

Welp, after five months of not being able to buy one without being raked over the coals by scalpers, Nintendo decided to pull the plug! How many of you even saw one of these in stores, because I never have! I'm actually a bit irked by this! At least, in the past, when there were shortages of Nintendo products, you would eventually see them on store shelves. Now, there's a good chance that I will probably never own one because those $125+ ebay prices are going to swell!

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scotland
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Re: R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

Postby scotland » April 13th, 2017, 10:39 pm

BanjoPickles wrote:Nintendo decided to pull the plug!


Who is at the helm at that company?! Its one thing to have limited supply to drive up hype and keep prices high...but eventually you satisfy demand, at premium prices, and laugh all the way to the bank. Instead, they decide to ... what? Decide they can sell these games on a Switch Virtual Console? Build a business case against ROM piracy?

I have a feeling raspberry pi may benefit from this news.

BanjoPickles
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Re: R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

Postby BanjoPickles » April 13th, 2017, 10:59 pm

I have a feeling that I'm getting really tired of how difficult they are, as a company! It's like they go out of their way to p*** people off! I can almost understand artificial supply to create an artificial demand, but to create this shortage to drive up demand but yet never intend to satisfy said demand? That's just jerkish and incredibly inept!

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Rookie1
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Re: R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

Postby Rookie1 » April 14th, 2017, 7:54 am

I have never seen one in the wild, or at all for that manor. I thought they were just a myth.

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MoarRipter
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Re: R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

Postby MoarRipter » April 14th, 2017, 10:40 am

I have never seen one on a shelf, ever. I did luck out one day when I asked the guy at Walmart in the evening and he said they had one that had just come in. I was shocked and bought it.

It sucks that they cancelled it but I can understand why. Blame the hackers. They had to ruin a good thing as usual. Nintendo blindly and naively made the thing far too easy to hack. They put a giant button on the front to make it load into FEL mode for cripes sake. Nintendo could've avoided that by not transmitting data over the USB port and only using it for power but I imagine they used the USB port in the way they did to have an easy way to fix broken Classics. And it wasn't good enough for the hackers to make it possible to load every NES and Famicom title on the machine, then they had to go further and load Genesis and SNES and a wide range of other systems on it just to prove that they could. And with no way to update the firmware on the thing once it's sold, Nintendo wasn't going to continue to allow that to happen.

Maybe they'll release another Classic that is more robust against hacking but I doubt it, especially with how well the Switch is selling now.

I was really hoping the F'n damn scalpers that are hoarding this thing would get burned when Nintendo improved stock levels but that's not going to happen now. These stupid things will be over $300 again soon. Honestly the scalper market on this thing pissed me off more than anything. Lazy ass bums that don't have a real job but rely on reselling Nintendo products to make their rent to their mom, none of them are willing to do trades of any kind, they only want money and they have jerk attitudes to boot. I hate them.

CharlieR
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Re: R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

Postby CharlieR » April 14th, 2017, 11:05 am

This seems to not be all that weird, given Nintendo's decisions recently. I wonder, and maybe someone can give their opinion, would they have done this if this system had been released around the gamecube/wii era? Just seems like a really dumb idea as few people have even seen one in person, and probably never will now, but it would still sell like crazy. To me, I just have a feeling that this discontinuation wouldn't have happened ten years ago. Why discontinue something that is selling so well?

I rarely get involved in these comment sections in various websites, but I saw someone ask back in February if anyone still had trouble finding an NES mini. I commented asking if Nintendo hated money, and got a reply basically saying that the whole thing is generating PR (public relations) and that the Nintendo way is PR is good, be it positive or negative, and the whole thing with the NES classic got people talking about the brand again.

They also said Nintendo hedged their bets on the Switch, and anticipated that the people who couldn't get an NES classic would buy a switch instead. I'm not sure if I agree with that at all because people were buying a switch regardless of if they could get an NES classic or not.

I guess people try to spin this as "it was a PR stunt to get people to buy a switch," but as I just said, I think people were buying a switch regardless, and the two don't really have anything to do with each other. I just think the bottom line is that this was a missed opportunity for Nintendo to make some serious money.

Robotrek
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Re: R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

Postby Robotrek » April 14th, 2017, 1:38 pm

Well, it was likely due to ROM piracy. Nintendo just doesn't like that stuff. They've pulled games from the eShop on the 3DS in the past due to allowing homebrew software. In fact, I'm willing to bet if it wasn't for ROM piracy, Nintendo wouldn't pull the plug!

eneuman96
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Re: R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

Postby eneuman96 » April 14th, 2017, 3:23 pm

Some say Nintendo is using artificial scarcity as a tactic to drum up consumer interest, but this is just an insanely boneheaded move when you take into account that the Switch currently has no Virtual Console (the NeoGeo games don't count).

Also, what the hell is it with Nintendo and only releasing enough Virtual Console games to count on one hand at most per week? I understand it may take time and money to license third-party games, but what exactly is stopping them from releasing what amount to glorified ROMs of all of their first-party titles on the supported Virtual Console platforms for their systems when VC launches on them?

Additionally, I think they seriously need to consider selling Virtual Console games at cheaper prices. $4.99 isn't much when you're buying one NES game, sure, but it definitely adds up if you're buying all the games you remember from your childhood. Consider that most PS1 classics for PS3 and Vita go for a mere $5.99, whereas SNES games on Virtual Console go for $7.99. Unless the Switch Virtual Console titles have some sort of enhancements beyond savestates, there really is no excuse to continue selling them at such prices

Also, nobody wants to play Urban Champion, Nintendo. Nobody.

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scotland
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Re: R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

Postby scotland » April 14th, 2017, 3:56 pm

Robotrek wrote:Well, it was likely due to ROM piracy. Nintendo just doesn't like that stuff. They've pulled games from the eShop on the 3DS in the past due to allowing homebrew software. In fact, I'm willing to bet if it wasn't for ROM piracy, Nintendo wouldn't pull the plug!


I get it. I do. I would hate to write a book and have it stolen. However, one effective method to stop people file sharing is offer low cost legal alternatives - which discontinuing this stops cold. Another is to remind people to support the artists they like, which is a hard sell for 30 year old games which leaves you just supporting 'Nintendo' - a big corporate entity known for acting like a big corporate entity. How many creative people at Ninte do can you name? How many stories of Nintendo acting petty have you read?

So, how again does the issue that a handful of tech savvy hobbyists could alter their mini hardware that legions wanted to buy help fight ROM piracy? It doesn't. It drives fans to emulators.

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: R.I.P. NES Classic (Thanks, Nintendo!)

Postby VideoGameCritic » April 14th, 2017, 4:46 pm

I have a theory. They are probably cleansing the palette for a NES Classic 2. Let's face it - there are a lot of improvements they could make, including more games and a longer cord. Just in time for the holidays?

A lot of times when I'm looking for a game it will have suddenly disappeared for no apparent reason. Then a month or two later I see it in a "game of the year" form of something like that. They like to clear out their old inventory first.


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