Topic: Nintendo Sales Panic: November 2016 US NPD Group Results

[Shaymin]

The NES Classic number isn't a typo, or surprising.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/43804/nintendo-sales-panic-november-2016-us-npd-group-results

The NPD Group's monthly US sales survey shows strong performance for Pokémon and the difficulty of obtaining the NES Classic Mini.

Pokémon Sun and Moon finished #3 and #4 in the combined revenue charts, with a unit performance that was the biggest in the history of the series topping Pokémon Black and White's March 2011 debut. According to the NPD Group, Sun and Moon were up 8% from Black and White, which combined to sell over 2.4m units in 28 days of March. The 3DS recorded its best software sales month in history (beating the previous record December 2014 by 1%) and based on last year's estimates, the 3DS sold approximately 564,000 units in November (up 59% from last year).

The NES Classic Mini was a hot property in November, selling 196,000 units to lead the "retro console" segment. For comparison, the Famicom Classic Mini sold about 262,000 units in its first week of sale.

[ShyGuy]

so Nintendo only shipped 200k for the NES Classic at launch? Sounds like they aimed a little low.

[Luigi Dude]

That is just fucking pathetic.  Nintendo had gold in their hands, a guaranteed hot holiday seller and they just blew it.  I can somewhat understand they were playing it safe but only 200k during the month of Black Friday?  That is just complete incompetence.

Seriously, did they even notice how the announcement of the thing was causing wildfire across the internet and public a like?  People at work who don't normally even talk about Nintendo were exited about the thing.  This thing would have been an easy 10 million plus seller but now they'll be lucky if it even does 2 million.  That's of course if Nintendo even bothers to ship that many.

[Wanderlei]

NUMBERWANG!

[Enner]

Selling a lot would be nice. But do you know what's guaranteed? Not paying for multiple factories spinning and renting additional warehouse space!

[Mop it up]

Seriously, did they even notice how the announcement of the thing was causing wildfire across the internet and public a like?

You say this as if this is the first time Nintendo's been out of touch.

[ShyGuy]

Seriously, did they even notice how the announcement of the thing was causing wildfire across the internet and public a like?

You say this as if this is the first time Nintendo's been out of touch.

You're out of touch
I'm out of time
But I'm out of my head when you're not around

Hall and Oates nails the relationship a Nintendo fan has with Nintendo  ;)

[Luigi Dude]

You say this as if this is the first time Nintendo's been out of touch.

Even by Nintendo standards the shipment of the NES Classic is beyond incompetent.  It's one thing for Nintendo to be overly cautious on how they make their online in their games because they worry about pedo's attacking children but to completely under ship something that had so much hype is just criminal. 

It almost begs the question on why even make such a thing in the first place if they weren't even expecting it to perform that well?  They would have been better of just putting these games on a Wii U disc and calling that game the NES Classic and it probably would have sold the same thing to the hardcore still on the Wii U, making Nintendo more money since it would have cost less to make if they were expecting low sales.


You know I almost wonder if Nintendo intentionally undershipped the thing because after they announced the system and saw all the hype they started to worry if the NES Classic became too successful it would completely kill the Virtual Console.  A lot of people were talking about how much of a good deal the NES Classic was because you get 30 games for $60, which is basically $2 per game while the individual games would cost you $5 each on the Virtual Console.  If all these people buying the NES Classic were to suddenly by the Switch and see the same NES games they got on the Classic are $5 each on the Virtual Console, they'll be less likely to buy them and just start waiting for more NES Classics to be released.  And then of course people are going to be expecting SNES Classic and N64 Classics to come out as well which would make them less likely to buy these games as well in Nintendo's eyes.

So yeah, knowing Nintendo I wouldn't be surprised if something like this might have happened.  They removed NES games from Animal Crossing games after the Gamecube version for this exact reason so it wouldn't surprised me if not wanting people to expect these good bundle deals for classic Nintendo game is part of their reasoning.  They want people who want retro Nintendo games to buy their own hardware and buy each game individually at higher prices on the Virtual Console and expect that as the only way to get these games outside of these rare once in a blue moon deals like the NES Classic.