SNES Mini: Many annoyed as Nintendo work their pre-order magic once again
When are you gonna learn, Ninty? Oh, you're not? Ok then.
Well, here's an article that could pretty much just be copied and pasted in from similar ones last year with just a few cosmetic changes. Nintendo, once again, have decided to make a complete and total pig's breakfast out of pre-orders for the much-anticipated SNES Classic Mini Edition that has Star Fox 2 on it and some other games -- thanks to the combination of the pre-orders opening up without warning and in the middle of the night, Nintendo's strategies have once again annoyed many people who wished to at least have a chance at snagging a SNES Mini, but weren't able to even get a shot.
So, what happened this time? Well, at 3 a.m on August 22nd, Amazon and Best Buy opened up pre-orders for the Mini without telling anyone whatsoever -- it seems as though even those who signed up to receive notifications for availability didn't get informed. At 10 a.m, Wal-Mart and Target opened up their pre-orders -- again, totally without warning. Pre-orders for Walmart in particular apparently sold out within two minutes -- despite the recent fiasco that occured with Walmart accidentally opening them up early, people clearly realised that there wasn't to be any screwing around this time.
Those unfortunate to be just a little slow off their feet online often found themselves with shopping baskets that were suddenly empty, almost at the point of making the transaction -- this happened in particular with pre-orders from Target. This leaves two other retailers who will officially be selling the SNES Classic in North America -- one of them, Toys 'R' Us, are not accepting pre-orders for the item, so if you're getting it from there you'll likely have to get down to a store on September 29th and prepare yourself for a day where at multiple times you will be physically and mentally capable of murdering a fellow human being. This was also the case for those relying on GameStop on the 22nd, seeing as you had to go to the physical store in order to make a SNES Mini pre-order that wasn't some sort of bundle.
As ever, we know what's causing all this -- Nintendo's utterly baffling and far beyond irritating strategy of releasing way too few products on the market at launch. It has been the same with literary every console that they have released -- somehow this always gets ignored when it happens and people write articles either hoping that the same thing doesn't happen, or actually believing it when someone at Nintendo says that it won't happen when they've been doing it since the 1980's and there is literally no sign of them stopping. Clearly the big N thinks that this is the way to go when it comes to releasing stuff -- to initially put out not nearly enough to satisfy demand and gradually leak them out. And in the case of the NES Mini and probably like this, you pull it way before you've even come close to covering the entire demand.
The question then, is WHY do Nintendo do this? For some this is a completely mind-boggling decision, but the main reason behind it is to give Nintendo products the appearance of being a lot classier and ultimately more valuable than the opposition's -- it's the same reason why Nintendo games go down in price at a much slower rate than comparable titles on other machines. A Nintendo machine is worth more by virtue of its name, and is potentially a lot more valuable in the long run -- this strategy is why a Super Nintendo is worth a lot more than a Sega Genesis, even though they are equally common. You may wonder how one does this with a mass-produced electronics product, but in truth it's simple: Present it as such, and create artificial scarcity. It is, needless to say, absolute bullshit. So, in summary: Do not expect Nintendo to learn from this any time soon, and expect this article to be posted again with the product name changed whenever this happens with the N64 Classic or whatever's next for Nintendo.
