Day 6: Loving and Hating Nintendo

The Nintendo Switch comes out in a little over a month.
I want one. Badly. I grew up with Zelda and Mario and Samus. The next Zelda is on the Switch (and yes, I know, there will be a Wii U version, but I can’t put that in my shoulder bag to play when no one comes to my office hours, so pfffft).

But Nintendo apparently doesn’t want my money.

They didn’t over the holidays. I wanted to get my wife a NES Classic so we could relive our childhoods. And they were beyond sold out everywhere (I was the first person to NOT get one in the line at Gamestop, though– yay me!).

Now I can’t find any store that will let me pre-order a Switch.

I know there are sometimes manufacturing problems. but this is starting to feel like Nintendo’s marketing plan. If it is, I’d love for someone to explain it to me. I get scarcity and supply vs. demand, but when there’s so much demand that there’s no risk of people letting the product sit, creating demand seems like a terrible strategy.

More importantly to me, I keep seeing this strategy by Nintendo create a monster secondary market. I saw someone pay $500 for a $70 NES Classic. Unless Nintendo is somehow getting an illegal cut from secondary sales, they’re screwing their fans by not creating enough units and fueling the secondary market. It seems like it’s no benefit to Nintendo at all, but they make no moves to correct the issue.

I still haven’t found a NES Classic at retail. I haven’t even seen one since the launch morning.

Crazy.