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@StephenYour logic seems sound, but personally, I was much more inclined to buy the NES Mini in November than I am now. Feels like old news to me.
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on: 02/07/17, 05:32 |
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@Secret_TunnelExactly. Nintendo has people right where they want them. Three months later. Ha!
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on: 02/07/17, 05:35 |
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@Secret_TunnelHis logic is garbage. They sold out originally because a large amount of demand was already there. But he tries to argue that Nintendo are *creating* that demand via a deliberate shortage. This is chicken and egg nonsense. Koovaps is dead on, the entire concept is logically preposterous. If Nintendo *knew* that much demand would be there, then it'd make sense to cater for that much demand. Even if they *wanted* to follow Stephen's idiotic strategy, the trick would be to just fall short, so as to maximise sales whilst still creating artificial buzz, as opposed to falling heoplessly short, and risking potential Christmas sales. Even then as is noted, you then have to have a secret stockpile to trickle out ready to take advantage. They didn't, because it's a ludicrous idea. And no amount of made-up numbers will disguise that. @StephenYou haven't changed your mind. You gave up a tiny bit of ground in one instance and now we're right back to square one with you spouting the same baseless nonsense. At no point has the fact that you were wrong previously caused you to evaluate the basis for your shitty conspiracy theories. You have learned nothing from that incident. So yeah, as long as you keep complaining about Nintendo's 'track record' (which you've made up), whilst completely ignoring your own track record on this issue, I'll 'shame' you. Especially when you hijack a helpful PSA thread to spread your constant negative rubbish.
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on: 02/07/17, 06:04 |
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02/07/17, 06:05 |
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@KoovapsIt is without question a tactic that businesses use. So as a concept it most certainly isn't ridiculous. Not effective? Okay, maybe. Is it what Nintendo is doing? Perhaps, perhaps not. As a concept though? Totally sound. The debate is whether Nintendo is doing it or not. I don't buy that it works out to less, though. I can name random toys from the 90s to you and you would probably not know them. If I say Tickle me Elmo, or Furby you instantly know what I am talking about because all the buzz around those toys was hard to forget or ignore. And that was artificial scarcity. Some might move on like ST, but I think that the gains likely far exceed the losses and create a higher perception of value when otherwise it might not exist. Once you have people thinking it is more valuable than what they charge for it they will be more likely to buy it. That's just basic economics. @ShadowlinkYou're the one hijacking it man. I just gave my honest reaction to the news. You took exception to it. Oh no, someone's wrong on the internet. Better kill my own thread to sort them out! If you don't want to talk about then don't talk about it. Again, I will ask you do you honestly think Nintendo couldn't make more than 1.5 million? Or that they could but were totally blindsided by the fact that more people wanted them than that? Either way there they are either doing it on purpose or they aren't. If it is on purpose it is artificial scarcity. If it isn't then it is flat out ineptitude. The only way for them to be in the clear is to accept their production issue excuse which is extremely suspect as others have said. Polygon said:Nintendo announced the NES Classic Edition four months ago. That’s one third of one orbit around the Earth’s sun. The announcement immediately went viral, sending traffic needles spiking across the web. If Nintendo didn’t know the NES Classic Edition was going to be a hit on the morning of July 14, it knew it by the afternoon.
Here’s a sampling that I collected of various writers talking about the traffic windfalls the announcement brought with it. Shortly after publishing the news, and suggesting the NES Classic Edition would be a hit, Wired’s Chris Kohler tweeted:
Another clue: LOTS of traffic on the WIRED story.
And Kotaku’s Jason Schreier corroborating its popularity:
@kobunheat 200K pageviews on our story - already almost as much as the Zelda announcement post, and it's only been three hours
And Ars Technica’s Kyle Orland matching the pattern:
Same general pattern here. Google News seems hot on it.
The NES Classic Edition stories also dominated the charts at both Polygon and The Verge that day, easily staking top spots in July despite the preponderance of Pokémon Go stories.
All Nintendo had to do, over the next four months leading up to its release, is make sure it could deliver enough. And now, just as stores are opening to sell it on its launch day, it’s ... out of stock. Everywhere.
At my local GameStop in Philadelphia, there were more than 20 people in line an hour early ... for just five units. They were on the phone, coordinating with loved ones at the Best Buy in South Philly, at another GameStop further out, others hoping to get their name on a list once the store opened. One of our staff went to a midnight launch at a Target in suburban Cincinnati and managed to be fifth in line. They only had six units.
Colleagues are messaging me on Slack, asking me how to get one. You can’t. A casual glance at a Twitter search for NES Classic indicates, what’s this ... oh, it’s sold out everywhere. Your next, best chance is when Amazon puts its NES Classic stock up for sale at 2 p.m. PT today. Good luck.
Nintendo will issue a statement with some variant of, “We’re so thrilled that customers are as excited about the NES Classic Edition as we are.” Or maybe it’ll be, “We continue to be surprised at the demand and will work to meet it this holiday.” Or perhaps they’ll be honest and say the truth and, as best I can tell, there are only two possible answers: Nintendo is being underhanded or Nintendo is incompetent.
UNDERHANDED
This isn’t the first time Nintendo has had difficulty fulfilling demand for a product. In fact, it’s something of a pattern. Do a quick search for Nintendo Wii managed scarcity and find the hundreds of stories asking, one way or another, Why can’t Nintendo keep the Wii in stock.
Woof Gizmodo
Yes, the Wii was successful. But so is the new iPhone, and you can go into any Apple Store in America and walk out with one. The Wii was hard to come by for years. It wasn’t cutting edge technology, by design. It was designed to be affordable. There was no fancy RAM, shortages of which kept the PlayStation 3 hard to come by for a couple months. They just didn’t fulfill demand. One year later. Two years later. All the while, keeping the media narrative of the hottest toy in town alive.
Anyone who buys or, worse still, collects amiibos is all too familiar with this pattern. Simple toy, relatively easy to manufacture, is impossible to find. There are preorders, there are email lists, there’s price gouging from scalpers on marketplaces like eBay.
As of Oct. 2015, Nintendo sold over 21 million amiibos, an impressive figure to be sure for just one year. Meanwhile, Activision had some sold 250 million Skylanders figures as of June 2015, less than four years after the franchise debuted. You don’t hear about Skylanders scalping much, do you?
So either Nintendo is constraining supply, in order to drive hype and awareness and the allure of exclusivity — a holiday narrative as applicable to the NES Classic as it was for Tickle Me Elmo — or Nintendo is just consistently bad at assessing demand and then meeting it.
INCOMPETENT
Could it be that we take Nintendo at its word and the company is just that bad at judging demand? And it’s been that bad for an actual decade now? This explanation feels a lot better because it means that Nintendo isn’t willingly asking loyal customers and fans to wait in the cold in the middle of the night, or show up to work late, all because they’re eager to relive their childhood memories or, better still, buy a gift for a child so they can share that experience.
Like the Wii, and amiibos, the NES Classic isn’t a complicated piece of machinery. The controller is a near clone of a 31-year-old piece of electronics. The console itself is mostly air, the electronics inside a low-cost system on a chip. This shouldn’t be difficult to manufacture. If it somehow was difficult to get the part they needed, there’s no shortage of SoCs powerful enough to emulate an NES. If the chips were available and Nintendo’s initial expectations were off, it had four months to align them. If it didn’t or couldn’t align them, Nintendo still had time to communicate to customers a better plan than “Just show up to a store and wait outside.” It’s a great product (read my review!) ... which makes this shortage all the more frustrating.
These are Nintendo’s most loyal customers, and every single time Nintendo screws up a shipment or creates scarcity, managed or not, it’s showing those customers that it either doesn’t care or can’t be bothered to figure out what’s wrong with its chronic inability to meet demand. There is no third option and, honestly, I don’t know what’s worse. Polygon's take.
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on: 02/07/17, 06:50 |
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02/07/17, 06:59 |
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@Stephen'It's not my fault for trolling, it's your fault for responding to it.' What utter shit. According to you we should continue to let your toxic negativity proliferate across the forum. Fuck that. I'll call your Nintendo hate fetish out when I see it. Yes Nintendo could make more than 1.5 Million. If you can make 1, you can make 2. If you can make 2, you can make 4. If you can make 4 you can make 8. If you can make 1.5 million, you can make 15 million. 150 million. You see how utterly meaningless your argument is? There's still constraints though. Parts. Time. Manufacturing capacity. There's not a magic "Make more NES Classics!" button that Nintendo can press. They manufactured a number they thought they could reasonably expect to sell. They were wrong. That doesn't magically make them incompetent. And basic logic blows the entire concept of artificial scarcity away, whether you acknowledge it or not. Again, you're criticizing from the position hindsight. You, of all people. Someone who has sneered at the idea of Amiibos from day one, scoffed at the notion of repurchasing 30-year old NES games, repeatedly derided the motion controls on the Wii....yet you sit there and claim Nintendo should have predicted far in advance the exact level of insane demand that occurred for all of these things you claim are crap? Please.
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on: 02/07/17, 07:30 |
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02/07/17, 07:31 |
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@ShadowlinkOr, you know, let me voice my opinion in peace. Even if I was a troll as you so love to claim the old adage goes 'Don't feed the trolls'. You'd be giving me exactly what I want. The Polygon article goes over all that. They had time. Parts are simple. I have no idea what your hindsight argument is. I never said any of those things would be unsuccessful. Furthermore, I was excited about the motion controls so I really have no idea what you are on about. I don't like those things therefore I was wrong about how successful they'd be? Huh?
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on: 02/07/17, 07:58 |
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Shadowlink said:@Stephen
'It's not my fault for trolling, it's your fault for responding to it.'
What utter shit. According to you we should continue to let your toxic negativity proliferate across the forum. Fuck that. I'll call your Nintendo hate fetish out when I see it. Honestly I find your inability to let anything he ever says go to be more "toxic" than anything he posts. I haven't always agreed with his criticisms, but it's never struck me as anything remotely close to trolling or a "hate fetish." A snarky critical comment about Nintendo is no big deal (and in a lot of cases totally justified), but then you relish the opportunity to swoop in to Nintendo's defense and then a fruitless five-page argument dominates every other news thread. As for artificial scarcity, it can be a legitimate sales driver, but the circumstances are pretty specific. Nintendo's apparent inability to take advantage of it leads me to believe it's not actually their strategy. If I had to guess, I'd say they're just deaf to pre-release buzz for some weird reason and thus really awful at forecasting demand. In addition to being generally conservative in production runs.
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on: 02/07/17, 08:05 |
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02/07/17, 08:07 |
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nate38 said:Shadowlink said:@Stephen
'It's not my fault for trolling, it's your fault for responding to it.'
What utter shit. According to you we should continue to let your toxic negativity proliferate across the forum. Fuck that. I'll call your Nintendo hate fetish out when I see it. Honestly I find your inability to let anything he ever says go to be more "toxic" than anything he posts. I haven't always agreed with his criticisms, but it's never struck me as anything remotely close to trolling or a "hate fetish." A snarky critical comment about Nintendo is no big deal (and in a lot of cases totally justified), but then you relish the opportunity to swoop in to Nintendo's defense and then a fruitless five-page argument dominates every other news thread. Agreed. That needs to stop.
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on: 02/07/17, 08:16 |
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@StephenHow about you just stop with the negative posting? Do you really think it's necessary that you have to pull Nintendo apart on everything they do? Do you think we're not capable of criticizing Nintendo where warranted without your guidance? Honestly, what was going through your mind when you wrote that comment? 'Hey look some good Nintendo news. Better tell everyone how shitty I think they've they've been! Again!' What does it add? What's the point? Except to cause controversy? Unless a thread is specifically courting that kind of opinion, don't you think it might be better if you just left it unposted? You've already admitted you do this when you have a positive opinion that you feel has adds nothing to the discussion. Just extend that concept to your negative opinions too. Please. Then neither I nor anyone else who is so inclined, will take issue. @nate38If it was a one-off snarky comment in among general Nintendo positive posts, I would agree. But it's relentless, it's been going on for years, and I'm not the only one who's noticed. Sure I accept that it's tiresome seeing me engage him in another argument yet again. But by the same token, do we need to hear him voice the same complaints for the 500th time? Especially when it's nothing but baseless speculation like this topic? The Mini NES sold out. They're making more. That should be the take away here.
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on: 02/07/17, 08:54 |
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02/07/17, 08:55 |
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@ShadowlinkIt was intended to be a joke rather than a point of discussion. When somebody jokes with me about Nintendo magic I generally try not to rehash that entire argument.
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on: 02/07/17, 09:09 |
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@StephenMaybe you should have mentioned that at the start instead of doubling down on defending it as if it was serious commentary. A tip for next time I guess.
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on: 02/07/17, 09:17 |
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02/07/17, 09:17 |
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@ShadowlinkIt still is my view, I just didn't intend on redebating it all over again. You put us on that road, not me.
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on: 02/07/17, 09:24 |
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@StephenIf that was true,you could have said you didn't intend to debate it. Yet you did. A bit disingenuous to blame me for posts that you chose to make. Here's an alternate response you could have made instead: "I don't have any proof, I was just making a joke" . Done and done.
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on: 02/07/17, 09:42 |
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@ShadowlinkI have no problem debating it. You do. youre the one claiming I hijacked your thread.
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on: 02/07/17, 09:45 |
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@StephenWow. You have zero self-awareness. You made an unnecessary snarky comment. You *started* the debate. You continued to debate it. And then you put it all on me. Seriously? And you know what the best part is? If I had given up and left you to wallow in your negativity, what would you have done? Oh right, you'd then accuse me of 'running away'. What a joke.
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on: 02/07/17, 09:48 |
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02/07/17, 09:52 |
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@ShadowlinkYou're the one lacking in self-awareness man. You had two people tell you that what you're doing is more toxic than anything I am doing. I posted a joke that was a bit of a rib on Nintendo. You then started debating me on the matter. I literally cannot start a debate by myself. Which, again, I don't care. I will gladly debate my opinions and learn more about others' positions. You're the one who has a problem with it in this thread. If you're saying 'don't post things that might trigger me' well, then the answer to that is simply 'no'.
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on: 02/07/17, 09:56 |
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@StephenI acknowledged their concerns. Have you acknowledged mine? How many people have to tell you that your negativity is a problem before you stop? Because you and I both know that more than two people have told you that your behaviour is toxic. And yeah you can't carry on a debate by yourself. Guess what. Neither can I. But If I leave, you'll bitch and moan about it . So why can't you leave? Why didn't you stop it before it started? Why is it all on me? At what point do you take any responsibility for your own actions instead of blaming it all on me? You stop your nonsense, and I'll stop responding. Everyone will be happy. Unless you literally cannot stop yourself posting negative things, in which case you have deeper issues.
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on: 02/07/17, 10:03 |
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02/07/17, 10:06 |
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@ShadowlinkSo far it is just 2. And both of you read into what you think I mean far more than what I actually mean. So I cannot help you there. And again, if you're saying don't post stuff that will upset you, well, then my answer remains 'no'. Again, I don't mind debating this. You're the one who did and then complained that the thread was hijacked. I will post negative things when I have negative things to say. Similarly, I will post positive things when I have positive things to say. In both cases I seek to voice my own opinion and add to the conversation. I try not to reiterate what has been said over and over in the thread. Nobody else seems to have this preoccupation with me except you and Jargon. They either discuss it reasonably or ignore me if they find it objectionable. That seems to work out pretty nicely.
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on: 02/07/17, 10:22 |
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@StephenActually off the top of my head it's at least 4 people who have expressed concern, multiple times. I know for a fact that one of them (not Jargon, not me) has called you out on this this in the last month alone. Have you forgotten already? Surely your denial doesn't run that deep. And if I really had to (and I shouldn't) I could probably dredge up others who have had issues at one point or another. Not to mention the reputation that followed you from IGN. Did that materialize in a vacuum? Nearly 10 years of this nonsense Stephen. Come on. How many more people have to speak up before you acknowledge that there's an issue? Or do you honestly believe that when we see you constantly post "Nintendo is being shitty on (issue X)" that we're somehow misconstruing you when we read that as Stephen saying "Nintendo are being shitty" for literally the 100th time? It's hard to see how we're 'reading into' anything. And how do you reconcile your attitude of "I don't mind debating this" with the acknowledgement that others find these constant arguments toxic? Or is the cognitive dissonance so strong that you think my participation is toxic, but your participation is just healthy debate? The problem is you almost invariably have negative things to say. Positive things are few and far between. Can you understand how tiresome that can be on a Nintendo fan site? Are you capable of that kind of empathy or do you just literally not care? If it was the odd negative post here and there it'd be okay, but you know that's not the case. Here's the thing. If I you pull back on the negative posts , I don't feel the need to respond, and overall this becomes a much happier place. But If I just stop responding to you, your negativity continues on. Sure people can just ignore you. But they shouldn't have to. Why wouldn't you want to make this place better? Why choose to constantly post things that drag it down?
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on: 02/07/17, 10:50 |
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02/07/17, 10:54 |
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@StephenThat article talks about amiibo and Skylanders, and comments that 'you don't hear about Skylanders scalping much, do you?' Wrong. There absolutely was Skylanders shortages and scalping. You know when? With the very first game. Jeff Gerstman would talk about it on Giant Bomb all the time, because he got in to Skylanders from the start. They then figured out supply afterwards. And even then, there are always figures and pieces that sell out making them hard to find. And guess what, Nintendo figured out amiibo and they are rather plentiful on store shelves, just like Skylanders. Also, if artificial scarcity is a thing, why doesn't Nintendo do it for literally everything? Every product, ever? Or do they?
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on: 02/07/17, 13:57 |
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02/07/17, 14:04 |
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