16 ms·

Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

272 points by smaili 10y ago

typicalrunt 10y ago
I grok capitalism and even like it. But there are times where it is difficult to like it. In this case, people rushed to buy this product for the sole purpose of reselling it for 8x. What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. In the end, I think these scalpers won't sell for 8x because anintendo will just pump out more product. Still, it is sad to see this happen.
- crooked-v 10y ago
  > bereft of good sense Investing money in something that is nigh-guaranteed to have excellent returns is very good sense for anyone with the time and effort to spend on reselling the product.
  - edgarvaldes 10y ago
    And, let's be sincere here, this is not some essential item, like food or shelter.
- e40 10y ago
  What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. This type of behavior is literally all around us. I recently listened to a podcast about this exact phenomenon. It featured a couple that had a special rug that drove cats crazy. They sold it on amazon for ~$35. A bunch of people bought them up and sold them on ebay for a lot more, using the drop-ship method (the reseller ordered it using their amazon account with the buyers shipping address). When people realized they were being ripped off, they returned it to the original seller, who had to handle the claims due to requirements by amazon. They lost 10's of thousands of $$. The creator called some of the people doing this and they laughed him off, telling him they were doing nothing wrong. It was on planet money's podcast, I think. I can try and find it if you're curious.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    The problem isn't the arbitrage (which is a core component of capitalism and profit [1]) these people are utilizing, its Amazon's draconian policy towards sellers. [1] Hat tip to patio11: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087930 > They're likely using one of the world's oldest business models: "Buy things for $1, sell them for $2."
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Episode 724: Cat Scam[1] 1: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/09/14/493810206/episode-724-cat-scam http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/09/14/493810206/episo...
    - zizee 10y ago
      As a side note, that episode left me wondering why the original seller didn't open their own eBay store, listing the product at their desired price. I would have thought it would have effectively undercut the resellers and gain a large portion of the sales on eBay. Another note, Planet Money is pretty much my favourite "always on"* podcast. An podcast about economics might sound dull to some, but what a lot (maybe not on HN) people don't realise is "economics" is a really a study of human behaviour at the macro level, and a large part of human behaviour at the micro level. * serial was hugely addictive, but it only has short seasons, and each episode had what seemed like a huge wait between them.
      - kbenson 10y ago
        > As a side note, that episode left me wondering why the original seller didn't open their own eBay store, listing the product at their desired price. I would have thought it would have effectively undercut the resellers and gain a large portion of the sales on eBay. Yeah, as long as they were aggressive in making sure there were on multiple marketplaces, and came up first in searches, that would probably be the best response. The bit gain here isn't really the extra sales on the other marketplaces, it's the reduced returns which eat into their profits. > Another note, Planet Money is pretty much my favourite "always on"* podcast. An podcast about economics might sound dull to some, but what a lot (maybe not on HN) people don't realise is "economics" is a really a study of human behaviour at the macro level, and a large part of human behaviour at the micro level. Also one of my favorites. I also enjoy Freakonomics. For anyone that enjoys well produced podcasts, I highly recommend just about everything Gimlet Media produces. It was founded by one of the original founders of Planet Money (Alex Blumberg), and they've gotten quite few NPR alumni at this point (mostly from This American Life, which is basically a expert podcast production training ground at this point, Planet Money spawned from that as well). My current favorites are: - Startup - Excellent. They've gone through a few seasons now. I recommend starting at the beginning. - Reply All - For the most part excellent. They occasionally to into weird territory, but I laugh during their episodes quite often. The interplay between the hosts is great. Like friends that are kind of assholes to each other because they've been friends for so long, and you get a front row seat. - Science Vs - A new favorite of mine. At first I wasn't sure what to make of the delivery, which is very campy, but now I think it's perfect for what can be fairly dry subject matter. - Heavyweight - If you know who Jonathan Goldstein is, or have listened to This American Life enough to recognize his voice (and if you've heard it before, you probably will), you'll have a good idea of what you're in for. I recommend starting with Episode #2 to see if you like it, because it's amazing in both the names involved and the audacity of the idea. That said, I did tear up at the end of #1, as I have brothers of my own. - Mystery Show - Also excellent, but no longer continuing. Another TIL alumni, Starlee Kine. There's others in there too, which are all fairly good, but these, along with a smattering of others[1] I listen to are more than enough for me to handle. That said, Gimlet does have a triplet of new shows for their "fall lineup"[2], and some of those sound great too. Okay, that's enough about Gimlet, I've just been really happy about the quality of podcasts lately, and they've contributed a lot to that I think. Radiotopia seems to be the other (different) group that's got some quality content. It's kind of amazing that since I only really listen to them when in the car, I sometimes look forward to running errands just so I get a few more minutes in to listen. 1: 99% Invisible, Criminal (I believe Gimlet hired one of the founders of this for one of their new shows), Real Time with Bill Maher, Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project, The Memory Palace. 2: https://gimletmedia.com/2016/11/01/introducing-gimlets-fall-lineup/ https://gimletmedia.com/2016/11/01/introducing-gimlets-fall-...
- childifchaos 10y ago
  How is this "morally bankrupt"? It's just smart. Every business on earth would do this in there sector if they had the chance. What's wrong with a smart and clever individual buying this to resell at 8x? It's not hurting anyone, it's just a stupid retro console. What's wrong with society? People are struggling and getting screwed over by governments and big business, they badly need income and here is a small opportunity to get a piece of that pie. Ultimately someone that wants the product who is happy to pay the price that it is sold for, because they deem it worth that price, ends up with the product in there life. And someone else manages to profit to, to gain some much needed income so they can purchase something they want in there life. Hardly morally bankrupt. There is no change in the outcome here. There are still the same amount of people with these consoles, enjoying them as before. Nobody is hurt. In fact you could argue that someone doing this is a net gain, because two people gain instead of one. Someone made a profit that wouldn't otherwise and someone got the console they wanted (and obviously didn't care about the price)
  - eridius 10y ago
    > It's not hurting anyone, it's just a stupid retro console. It's hurting the people who are forced to pay $600 for a $60 item because they need one (e.g. a must-have gift for someone). It's hurting the people who wanted to buy one for $60 but cannot afford to buy one for $600. So yeah, it's hurting basically everybody who had any interest in buying the product.
    - bunderbunder 10y ago
      If you're being "forced" to pay $600 for a $60 item because you must buy one right now, perhaps you need to stop and question the nature of your relationship with that person. If you are so bothered by having to wait for them to come back onto the market at $60 that it hurts you (as opposed to, say, just being a minor annoyance), perhaps you need to stop and question the nature of your relationship with yourself.
    - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
      This argument is ridiculous. Otherwise there would be no such thing as luxury goods.
- r00fus 10y ago
  I really don't see why Nintendo didn't produce a bit more on launch - I mean, they're not some kickstarter newbie - don't they have some skills in demand-forecasting?
  - jedberg 10y ago
    When you hear about how the latest Nintendo is sold out everywhere, it makes you want one more. They have slow production on purpose. If you could walk into any store and get one, it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal.
    - bunderbunder 10y ago
      Not to mention that having the production capacity to meet initial demand on a popular product would be an huge waste of money. Best case scenario, a week or two after launch, the vast majority of that capacity would be sitting idle after the initial rush is over and the purchase rate tapers off. Worst case scenario, the product isn't as popular as you anticipated and you've got a big ol' writedown to deal with. (Atari anyone? Blackberry tablet?)
    - odbol_ 10y ago
      Plus, you can just go to any garage sale and buy one of the original consoles with 100s of games for like $20
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        I don't seek out garage sales but look for old Nintendos when I end up at one and I never see them, never mind for cheap with a pile of games.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    It spikes demand. Crazy parents run all over the place looking for it. The winners are Nintendo, who gets sales in the 1Q, which is normally death for this kind of product, and the retailers, who get parents visiting daily and buying other crap. My brother spent weeks looking for the "cream pie in the face game" last year. In the process, he picked up a half dozen other board games.
- salmonet 10y ago
  Nintendo deserves some of the blame. They most likely created this shortage on purpose to create press.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  This is one way that markets clear prices when demand edges production. There's are many ways to do it, for example auctions. In this case the price sensitivity of the market is lower than the producer set, so the market is willing to pay more for the good than the product is selling it at. When this pricing mismatch happens, there is the ability to close the pricing gap through repricing by a third party otherwise known as arbitrage. This is one of the more important functional requirements for a market and the producer can take advantage of this based on how they price. Nintendo could have priced the system much higher and seen the same output but it may not have made as big if a splash, so really it's Nintendo driving this frenzy because they and all other major companies are good at this. It's not a big it's a feature (really in this case).
- metaphor 10y ago
  Agreed. It's quite sad that the impetus is on Nintendo to flood the market with product. As of this post, there were 3,800+ posts on eBay[1]; there's at least an entire page-full listing Buy It Now @ $1000 or more. [1] http://www.ebay.com/sch/?_nkw=nes%20classic%20edition http://www.ebay.com/sch/?_nkw=nes%20classic%20edition
- savanaly 10y ago
  I feel like if you truly groked capitalism, you would be able to point out lots of its flaws, but also to realize that scalping is definitely not one of them. With supply limited like this, the optimal social outcome is for the X units produced to go to the X people in the world who would value them most, in other words the people who would be willing to pay the most (only exception I can think of to this is if someone values it at V dollars and only has a net worth of W dollars where W < V, but for the sums we're talking about with the NES I think almost everyone either has or can scrounge up V). In the final accounting with reselling on amazon, the goods end up where they are most highly valued. Sure, if we held a lottery to see who gets to buy the NESs at the sticker price rather than auctioning them, the people winning the lottery would be more happy than the people who end up winning the auction. But as a whole, society would be impoverished since it's an inefficient distribution (no room to prove it in a HN post, but it's not too hard to work out on paper when tallying up the welfare of nintendo, the scalpers and all the people who get to buy the NES under one scenario or the other).
  - typicalrunt 10y ago
    I do understand capitalism, the point I made was that sometimes I don't have to like it. Scalping included. I don't need to prove my knowledge to you by pointing out lots of capitalism's flaws. Instead of reading my comment carefully, you decided to teach me about how basic supply and demand operate. Jesus, you are a self-absorbed piece of work.
    - savanaly 10y ago
      I'm truly sorry if my comment affected you negatively, it wasn't my intention. I used to be an econ tutor and sometimes my urge to just type my thoughts that way comes out and I regret that it sounds like lecturing. Anyways, why do you think that, given all that, scalping is a bad thing then? Isn't getting the goods to where they're valued most a good thing? Who's getting heartbroken here? The people who can't afford one at the market price of $600? But most of them weren't going to get one anyways because of the limited supply. If there's something to not like it's the scarcity, right?
- inimino 10y ago
  Why do you think this is morally bankrupt? We aren't talking about wheat, but a superfluous luxury item. Where's the moral argument?
- morgante 10y ago
  What exactly is "morally bankrupt" about buying a mispriced good and reselling it at a proper price? People get very morally righteous about scalping, but I don't understand why at all. Resellers are correcting a distortion in the market and providing a value-added service.
  - pluma 10y ago
    The only value they add is amplifying the scarcity. How it normally works is this: * Some person sells something locally for $x * There is demand outside that location for the same product * Someone buys the product locally for $x and sells it elsewhere for $y > $x * Customers are provided access to a product they would otherwise not be aware of or not have access to, the reseller makes money from the margin, the producer can produce and sell more product, everybody wins How it works in this case: * Some person sells something for price $x at a limited quantity * Someone buys up all the product for $x and resells it for $y > $x * Customers are prevented from accessing the product at the original price, the reseller makes money from the margin, the producer doesn't gain any advantage, only the reseller wins Can you honestly not see how this is different? It's morally bankrupt because it offers no value to anyone and entirely profits from the charity of the producer who sells a product below market value. And in the worst case the reseller ends up with tons of unsold product and is forced to dump it later or even throw it away completely (which depending on the margins may still turn a profit overall).
    - makomk 10y ago
      I think it may even be possible to dump all the risk of the items not selling and storage costs onto the original seller due to quirks of how Amazon works.
- z3t4 10y ago
  With high margins more entreprenors will enter the market. But in this case nintendo have a monopoly.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. I don't know, but I shun, punish (by refusing to do business with them) and counter-market such people whenever I can. It's one thing to take a good and resell it for a larger price to a different audience; you're in essence making it more accessible and also take on some distribution headache, and thus deserve to cash in. That's how almost every brick and mortar store works. But it's another thing to buy off someone's stock only to turn around and resell it for more to the same customer base. That's, in my opinion, just plain sliminess.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- matwood 10y ago
  > What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. In the end, I think these scalpers won't sell for 8x because anintendo will just pump out more product. Still, it is sad to see this happen. Morally? It's a video game. Scalpers are fine. Blame Nintendo for not making more of them or charging a higher price so the limited supply met demand. Everyone will have their NES Classic in a month or two.
- nilved 10y ago
  It might not have seemed that way in writing, but in reading your post is contradictory. If the motivation for a person to do this is lost on you, you don't grok capitalism; and if that bothers you, you don't like capitalism.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Clearly thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of gamers were sitting on the product page hammering the F5 key and some random selection thereof got their wish. I highly doubt that. My guess is that third party resellers used bots to purchase them all. Why wouldn't tc come to the same conclusion? Edit. yep here's one on eBay for $500+: http://m.ebay.com/itm/New-Nintendo-NES-Classic-Edition-Console-30-classic-Games-included-In-Hand-/282251775042?hash=item41b7844c42%3Ag%3AdQgAAOSwB09YJQNg&_trkparms=pageci%253A0eaa36dd-a868-11e6-b61e-74dbd18070b6%257Cparentrq%253A55c26f941580a5eb36147d47fffca634%257Ciid%253A1 http://m.ebay.com/itm/New-Nintendo-NES-Classic-Edition-Conso...
- minimaxir 10y ago
  Nintendo has had a history of unexplainable supply shortages for in-demand items. (case in point: Amiibo)
  - tostitos1979 10y ago
    Ha .. not unexplained. I am part of a few "deals" websites. People inexplicably want to collect all of them! They have predictions on what Amibos will sell out, so people can buy 'em sooner rather than later. Lots of crazy stuff. I thought it was to make a profit but it seems there are genuine collectors out there.
    - GFischer 10y ago
      Digital age Beanie Babies? http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/02/beanie_babies_bubble_economics_and_psychology_of_a_plush_toy_investment.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
      - jandrese 10y ago
        I've been calling them that for years.
  - DanielleMolloy 10y ago
Kenji 10y ago
All of these outages could be prevented by opening sales randomly in time windows and in small waves. Or with preordering. The same applies to sales with price reductions, etc. All these companies shoot themselves in the foot with stunts like that. Why not make it more expensive if there is such a demand, anyway?
- serge2k 10y ago
  > Why not make it more expensive if there is such a demand Is demand really high enough to support a higher price? Nintendo is infamous for putting out a short supply. I don't understand why Amazon can't just take preorders for the next batch.
gm-conspiracy 10y ago
Only half of my Nintendo holiday arbitrage attempts have been successful. There will be limited availability for a short time, then a flood of product.
- covercash 10y ago
  When I was younger, half the fun was trying to obtain the limited availability consoles!! Now it's no longer fun, just refresh a page and hope resellers don't buy up inventory before you can grab one. I'm still impressed that my mom somehow managed to get me an n64 for that first Christmas they were available! I was in disbelief since I was certain they were impossible to get. 13yo me had all the local toy store #s memorized and I'd call every day asking if they received any shipments. No dice. Shadows of the Empire on Christmas morning was so awesome! Tripping up those AT-ATs that morning was one of the more memorable moments in my gaming history. A few months prior, for my best friend's September birthday, his mom took us to Toysrus and let him pick either the just released n64 +1 game OR the on-sale SegaCD and a bunch of games. He chose... poorly.
oxide 10y ago
This kind of stuff is par for the course with Nintendo hardware from what I can tell. Is it deliberate? If so, does perceived scarcity drive more sales, or are they just sick of warehousing unsold products?
- matmann2001 10y ago
  Well, they did just get free advertising in the form of this TechCrunch article. Wouldn't be surprised if other news outlets pick on up on the story as well, with the spin of "the hot new Christmas toy". From that perspective, having short supply on release day seems like a decent plan. Once they get the publicity, I bet the supply increases to match demand within the following month.
pingec 10y ago
Funny thing, they are in stock in the local electronics store in my small hometown in Slovenia :)
- Keyframe 10y ago
  Where at? I'm in Croatia and I really wanted to buy one!
- mrfusion 10y ago
  Go buy a batch and get on eBay.
nashashmi 10y ago
Anybody know if Sega Genesis is also coming out in similar fashion?
- mantis369 10y ago
  I doubt it. I walked past a whole shelf of Sega Genesis emulation boxes at Target. That and the Atari Flashback 7 seem to be heavily stocked.
- skocznymroczny 10y ago
  http://www.news.com.au/technology/home-entertainment/gaming/sega-mega-drive-back-in-production-after-growth-in-popularity/news-story/340821dd914c02616ca10e4838ee8503 http://www.news.com.au/technology/home-entertainment/gaming/...
darkstar999 10y ago
The Amazon reviews got brigaded with 1 star reviews. They should work on preventing this.
- serge2k 10y ago
  Why? Nintendo decided to once again screw over their fans with their supply games. People are getting back at them for it.
  - caperstory 10y ago
    Patience!!!!!!!!! You are driving me insane! Go outside and play.
  - LeoPanthera 10y ago
    Why? Because bitching at Nintendo is not a review of the product. Obviously.
IgorPartola 10y ago
Sounds like Nintendo, along with a bunch of other companies, need to take a page out of USSR's book. The way it worked there is that you put your name on the list to buy, say, a car. And when the car is actually manufactured, you get to buy it. Big product launches like this could really benefit from a system like that. I know some places already do this: x.ai comes to mind. They even had a thing where you could move yourself up in the queue by getting others to sign up.
- kaoD 10y ago
  How would this fix the problem? Botters would just bot the list instead. It worked in the USSR because USSR.
  - gohrt 10y ago
    Name / address / Credit card registration.
- ovao 10y ago
  It is true that many consumers would benefit from such systems, but unfortunately, drumming up demand by trickling supply into the market is Nintendo's modus operandi.
- dawnerd 10y ago
  could have just done pre orders like apple and slip the shipping date as the list gets longer. It's not like companies don't have a solution. It's just Nintendo being Nintendo.
- MrFoof 10y ago
  This actually does happen with some car manufacturers. The one I'm most familiar with (having experience with the process) is Porsche with their GT cars and "collector grade vehicles". Want the next 911 GT3 RS? The best way to guarantee you get one is to give a dealer a deposit (usually just $5000) for "the next GT3 RS" at least 3 years before the vehicle is officially announced. You do have to wait for that dealer to get an allocation (so often you'll place a deposit with multiple dealers who sell a lot of 911s), but when they pop you get yours assuming you were early enough in line. A few long-term repeat customers may get bumped ahead of you in line, but at the end of the day you'll get your car. There was a lot of anger at the availability of the Cayman GT4, but despite never being a prior Porsche owner I had the opportunity to pass on it twice (for a much harder to get Boxster Spyder) because I knew how the process went, and had deposits for non-existant cars with multiple dealers years before they were announced.
UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
Amazon should do popular items like this using a lottery system to hurt the advantage bots, scripts, and people with lower latency have. - You can enter the item lottery for a longer period (e.g. 60 minutes). - Lottery winners are picked at random, not based on entry time. - Max one entry per household (remove entries with duplicate mailing addresses, duplicate credit cards, and duplicate email addresses). - Once someone wins they have a window to purchase (e.g. 3 hours). If they fail to purchase then the lottery picks a new winner. Now obviously cheats will still exist, but at least they're all on a fairer playing field with normal purchasers.
- gohrt 10y ago
  MBA Interview pro-tip: Amazon should make NES a Prime-only item.
  - mrfusion 10y ago
    Wow very smart! How do businesses not think of these things? I even got an impression from their nes classic page like they were saying "meh, we are not really sure if we sell this why do you want it"
  - Jach 10y ago
    https://www.amazon.com/treasuretruck https://www.amazon.com/treasuretruck had it today.
    - btgeekboy 10y ago
      Also sold out in minutes.
madengr 10y ago
I wonder if these things are timed for release once a target audience hits a certain age? What is that age? It was about 8 years between 1st gen consoles (Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision) and 2nd gen (Nintendo). The retro-rerelease of 1st gen was about 8 years ago. I am 45 and am nostalgic about 1st gen. I was in high school for 2nd gen; no nostalgia, uninterested. So do these retro-rerelease target those in their late 30's. Mid life crisis yearning for nostalgia?
- gohrt 10y ago
  What was the "Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision" retro-release? Seems like a newish phenomenon due to falling cost of production. Objectively, (if you put a complete novice kid in front of a console), NES and SNES's good/great games are the best.
  - km3k 10y ago
    madengr is right, the Atari ones have been available since 2004. They've put out a new version of it every other year or so. This year is their 7th version of the Atari Flashback. https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Flashback-7-Classic-Game-Console/dp/B01KV6E6Z2 https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Flashback-7-Classic-Game-Consol... There's ones for Intellivision (https://www.amazon.com/IntelliVision-AtGames-Flashback-Classic-Game-Console/dp/B00K2BOG66 https://www.amazon.com/IntelliVision-AtGames-Flashback-Class... ) and Colecovision ( https://www.amazon.com/ColecoVision-AtGames-Flashback-Classic-Game-Console/dp/B00NM9R6GW https://www.amazon.com/ColecoVision-AtGames-Flashback-Classi... ) too, but those have only been available for the last few years.
    - cpeterso 10y ago
      And there's been a Sega Genesis Classic Game Console (with 80 games) since 2012 or so. https://amzn.com/B01KV6E72O https://amzn.com/B01KV6E72O
- robk 10y ago
  I think probably the band of people born from about 1975-82 are probably the right segment. http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/04/us-births-per-year.html http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/04/us-births-per-year...
greenmountin 10y ago
Thought of this when I was browsing AliExpress for Singles Day, today, and found this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Video-Game-Projector-PGS-Console-built-in-8bit-NES-Childhood-Games-with-2-Joystick-Support-Dual/32526098498.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Video-Game-Projector-PGS-Con... Available cheap for another 8 hours, maybe something to tide them over?
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  The fact that these projectors have such low resolution, playing retro games is about all they are good for.
mrfusion 10y ago
Why doesn't Nintendo just raise their prices to where supply equals demand? They're leaving So much money on the table for scalpers. Or why not first release an expensive limited edition while they scale up production?
- metaphor 10y ago
  Hindsight is 20/20.
- Retric 10y ago
  Bad press.
  - corysama 10y ago
    Yep. It would be very bad for the brand if the device came out at a very high price initially. Nintendo has to pick a price for the long term, ship with it and stick with it. Short term profit opportunities would have a very large long term cost.
- jonknee 10y ago
  Because now they get to be on the news with a bunch of stories talking about how hot their new product is.
  - reustle 10y ago
    Exactly. I wouldn't have even known they released an official NES-raspberry-pi-esque product otherwise.
- danhak 10y ago
  Because the value of the free marketing they've just generated dwarfs the value that's being captured by scalpers.
- wepple 10y ago
  these things would've cost next to nothing to make, and they figure they can sell a large enough volume at a low price that they'd net more than upping the price slightly and selling substantially less.
mrfusion 10y ago
It seems silly to me to allocate a product by the vageries of refresh rates and server responsiveness. It seems like Amazon could come up with many other ideas for allocating a limited product. There's no rule that says it has to be based on the millisecond ordered. For example how about a game of chance (or skill?) to let people compete for the product? It would feel a lot more fulfilling than an error page. And it would give them good brand interaction.
- d23 10y ago
  Eh, or what about loyalty to amazon? If they had honestly messaged me and said that because of the age of my account and amount I had spent that I would get to be part of the first group in line to purchase, I might have even bought one just for that reason. Not that they needed more people buying them, but my loyalty to them would probably only go up.
  - ianai 10y ago
    On the flip side, stuff like this just sours the whole thing. Why have a sign up page to be alerted when something's available if you know it's going to be sold out immediately?
- ianai 10y ago
  Was there even any sign that this was going to be under supplied like this? I didn't get that impression from the reviews/previews I read.
chuckreynolds 10y ago
idk what happened but at 1400PST on the money i loaded it... "add to cart" and "buy now" buttons were there but their function was inoperable. That page was broken for hours after that. And now it just says not available. ugh
Waterluvian 10y ago
Honestly, I was going to buy one. But the itch will probably pass by the time they're back in stock. Since I'm filling that itch with emulators now. At an impulse buy price point, I wonder how many unrecoverable lost sales are caused by lack of supply.
- ben174 10y ago
  Agreed. All the sell-out did was frustrate me a bit then set me on a mission to create the ultimate all-in-one raspberry pi image.
  - efdee 10y ago
    Mission accomplished? I would be interested ;-)
  - ashark 10y ago
    Put lakka on an SD card. Put your roms on one of those super-cheap 128gb USB sticks that exist these days. Use PS3 controllers. Done. http://www.lakka.tv http://www.lakka.tv (I know I've posted lakka twice in this thread, but I'm not affiliated, just a happy user)
swang 10y ago
i continuously got an empty shopping cart everytime i tried to add it. i am pretty sure the site was hit so hard they just 404'd the URL so it wouldn't load anything. for a while the item page was blank while amazon.com continued to load.
yayitswei 10y ago
What's the (null) for in the headline? Nintendowned: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in (null) seconds
- everfree 10y ago
  If I had to guess it's probably a non-programmer trying to be clever, even though (null) doesn't make any sense in the context.
elcapitan 10y ago
The little machine is nice, but I wish they simply had some kind of an app store for old game ROMs. I would pay the price of a mobile game for old Mario Bros etc. Instead I have to download them from shady sources.
- ixixix 10y ago
  Umm, ever heard of virtual console on the Wii and Wii U?
  - elcapitan 10y ago
    I don't need a Wii, I just want to play the old games (alongside with old Atari and Sega).
joshbaptiste 10y ago
Nintendo needs to come out with an official retro wifi appliance that allows one to buy classic games from an App Store and play 2 player games over the network.
thenormal 10y ago
Days spent in my childhood...
fuqted 10y ago
I had the chance to buy one yesterday morning and I didn't take it up. That was my first hearing about it and I gotta say, beyond resell value I don't see the appeal of this thing. You can make a smaller NES with a Pi Zero and rented time on a 3D printer. I don't think people would have a problem trading use of cartridges for a much larger, cross platform selection. Is this a business opportunity?
- Jotra7 10y ago
  Found the guy that has never tried emulation on a Pi.
  - nawtacawp 10y ago
    Can you elaborate? Ive never used an emulator. I'm thinking NES games have a very low need for cpu / mem resources. Do they not run as good as the original?
    - brians 10y ago
      They had a bunch of special purpose chips that make emulation hard---both computationally intensive, and finnicky around details. For example, a real NES will glitch differently when many sprites are on the same row. Some games depend on this to be playable!
    - Jotra7 10y ago
      There are sound output bugs that make using any emulator terrible. The Pi 3 can barely handle SNES games.
    - everfree 10y ago
      I've tried an emulation box with RetroPie and the controller drivers are hard to find (at least for xbox 360 wired controller), the controls are difficult to set up (requiring manual edits to config files, which you need to plug a keyboard into your rpi to do), the controls are glitchy after you set them up, and the interface is not intuitive at all. If someone has a better idea for pi emulation I would really like to try it.
cube00 10y ago
They may have all 'sold' but there are 4,000+ available on eBay at the moment.
strikeZ 10y ago
"Nintendowned: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in (null) seconds" This is the headline I am seeing at the moment. Seems like the guy who was supposed to update the time forgot to do so.
michaelbuddy 10y ago
It'd be one thing if the product just came out, had a lot of media fanfare and sold out due to low volume. I mean that's reality right. But the fact that it appeared in weekly ads for stores all over the country. It's really expectation that hurts the most. That's just causing hassle, distrust. Retail employees probably don't lke to get 50 extra calls a day for a product that will be in stock for 14 seconds. If I were a regional mgr I'd put VERY heavy pressure on corporate for say Target to NOT show ads for this product until reasonable levels of stock are guaranteed. Targets around the country got about 11 units. The one I went to only had 1 spare controller. Keep in mind that a good portion of the NES games are co-op. There are 1800 target stores in the U.S. If they all got 11 units that means there were only 19,000 units for that store. I heard gamestops got about 5. Walmarts got about 6 units each. So 6 units to walmarts 5229 stores is about 31375 unit. Gamestops 4,434 stores at 5 units each get 21700 Who knows what amazon stocked at. Would it be reasonable to say amazon got 10000 units? I mean they sold out in a minute. Maybe it was less than that. So those totals add up to 82,075 units. Let's round up, not forgetting the Best Buys, Microcenters, mom-pop shops and The 800 Toys R Us stores in the U.S. and say the United States got maybe 112,000 units total for the release.
DarkMetatron 10y ago
It is such an overrated product, I have one, tried it and will send it back to amazon asap. It is Bad in so many levels, the short Controller cable is only one.
- Graziano_M 10y ago
  The short controller would suck, but it's kind of a requirements for compatibility with the wiimote. It 'speaks' i2c and at the data rates they require it's unlikely they could go much longer.

272 points by smaili 10y ago

I grok capitalism and even like it. But there are times where it is difficult to like it. In this case, people rushed to buy this product for the sole purpose of reselling it for 8x. What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. In the end, I think these scalpers won't sell for 8x because anintendo will just pump out more product. Still, it is sad to see this happen.

crooked-v 10y ago
> bereft of good sense Investing money in something that is nigh-guaranteed to have excellent returns is very good sense for anyone with the time and effort to spend on reselling the product.
- edgarvaldes 10y ago
  And, let's be sincere here, this is not some essential item, like food or shelter.
e40 10y ago
What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. This type of behavior is literally all around us. I recently listened to a podcast about this exact phenomenon. It featured a couple that had a special rug that drove cats crazy. They sold it on amazon for ~$35. A bunch of people bought them up and sold them on ebay for a lot more, using the drop-ship method (the reseller ordered it using their amazon account with the buyers shipping address). When people realized they were being ripped off, they returned it to the original seller, who had to handle the claims due to requirements by amazon. They lost 10's of thousands of $$. The creator called some of the people doing this and they laughed him off, telling him they were doing nothing wrong. It was on planet money's podcast, I think. I can try and find it if you're curious.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  The problem isn't the arbitrage (which is a core component of capitalism and profit [1]) these people are utilizing, its Amazon's draconian policy towards sellers. [1] Hat tip to patio11: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087930 > They're likely using one of the world's oldest business models: "Buy things for $1, sell them for $2."
- kbenson 10y ago
  Episode 724: Cat Scam[1] 1: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/09/14/493810206/episode-724-cat-scam http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/09/14/493810206/episo...
  - zizee 10y ago
    As a side note, that episode left me wondering why the original seller didn't open their own eBay store, listing the product at their desired price. I would have thought it would have effectively undercut the resellers and gain a large portion of the sales on eBay. Another note, Planet Money is pretty much my favourite "always on"* podcast. An podcast about economics might sound dull to some, but what a lot (maybe not on HN) people don't realise is "economics" is a really a study of human behaviour at the macro level, and a large part of human behaviour at the micro level. * serial was hugely addictive, but it only has short seasons, and each episode had what seemed like a huge wait between them.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      > As a side note, that episode left me wondering why the original seller didn't open their own eBay store, listing the product at their desired price. I would have thought it would have effectively undercut the resellers and gain a large portion of the sales on eBay. Yeah, as long as they were aggressive in making sure there were on multiple marketplaces, and came up first in searches, that would probably be the best response. The bit gain here isn't really the extra sales on the other marketplaces, it's the reduced returns which eat into their profits. > Another note, Planet Money is pretty much my favourite "always on"* podcast. An podcast about economics might sound dull to some, but what a lot (maybe not on HN) people don't realise is "economics" is a really a study of human behaviour at the macro level, and a large part of human behaviour at the micro level. Also one of my favorites. I also enjoy Freakonomics. For anyone that enjoys well produced podcasts, I highly recommend just about everything Gimlet Media produces. It was founded by one of the original founders of Planet Money (Alex Blumberg), and they've gotten quite few NPR alumni at this point (mostly from This American Life, which is basically a expert podcast production training ground at this point, Planet Money spawned from that as well). My current favorites are: - Startup - Excellent. They've gone through a few seasons now. I recommend starting at the beginning. - Reply All - For the most part excellent. They occasionally to into weird territory, but I laugh during their episodes quite often. The interplay between the hosts is great. Like friends that are kind of assholes to each other because they've been friends for so long, and you get a front row seat. - Science Vs - A new favorite of mine. At first I wasn't sure what to make of the delivery, which is very campy, but now I think it's perfect for what can be fairly dry subject matter. - Heavyweight - If you know who Jonathan Goldstein is, or have listened to This American Life enough to recognize his voice (and if you've heard it before, you probably will), you'll have a good idea of what you're in for. I recommend starting with Episode #2 to see if you like it, because it's amazing in both the names involved and the audacity of the idea. That said, I did tear up at the end of #1, as I have brothers of my own. - Mystery Show - Also excellent, but no longer continuing. Another TIL alumni, Starlee Kine. There's others in there too, which are all fairly good, but these, along with a smattering of others[1] I listen to are more than enough for me to handle. That said, Gimlet does have a triplet of new shows for their "fall lineup"[2], and some of those sound great too. Okay, that's enough about Gimlet, I've just been really happy about the quality of podcasts lately, and they've contributed a lot to that I think. Radiotopia seems to be the other (different) group that's got some quality content. It's kind of amazing that since I only really listen to them when in the car, I sometimes look forward to running errands just so I get a few more minutes in to listen. 1: 99% Invisible, Criminal (I believe Gimlet hired one of the founders of this for one of their new shows), Real Time with Bill Maher, Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project, The Memory Palace. 2: https://gimletmedia.com/2016/11/01/introducing-gimlets-fall-lineup/ https://gimletmedia.com/2016/11/01/introducing-gimlets-fall-...
childifchaos 10y ago
How is this "morally bankrupt"? It's just smart. Every business on earth would do this in there sector if they had the chance. What's wrong with a smart and clever individual buying this to resell at 8x? It's not hurting anyone, it's just a stupid retro console. What's wrong with society? People are struggling and getting screwed over by governments and big business, they badly need income and here is a small opportunity to get a piece of that pie. Ultimately someone that wants the product who is happy to pay the price that it is sold for, because they deem it worth that price, ends up with the product in there life. And someone else manages to profit to, to gain some much needed income so they can purchase something they want in there life. Hardly morally bankrupt. There is no change in the outcome here. There are still the same amount of people with these consoles, enjoying them as before. Nobody is hurt. In fact you could argue that someone doing this is a net gain, because two people gain instead of one. Someone made a profit that wouldn't otherwise and someone got the console they wanted (and obviously didn't care about the price)
- eridius 10y ago
  > It's not hurting anyone, it's just a stupid retro console. It's hurting the people who are forced to pay $600 for a $60 item because they need one (e.g. a must-have gift for someone). It's hurting the people who wanted to buy one for $60 but cannot afford to buy one for $600. So yeah, it's hurting basically everybody who had any interest in buying the product.
  - bunderbunder 10y ago
    If you're being "forced" to pay $600 for a $60 item because you must buy one right now, perhaps you need to stop and question the nature of your relationship with that person. If you are so bothered by having to wait for them to come back onto the market at $60 that it hurts you (as opposed to, say, just being a minor annoyance), perhaps you need to stop and question the nature of your relationship with yourself.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    This argument is ridiculous. Otherwise there would be no such thing as luxury goods.
r00fus 10y ago
I really don't see why Nintendo didn't produce a bit more on launch - I mean, they're not some kickstarter newbie - don't they have some skills in demand-forecasting?
- jedberg 10y ago
  When you hear about how the latest Nintendo is sold out everywhere, it makes you want one more. They have slow production on purpose. If you could walk into any store and get one, it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal.
  - bunderbunder 10y ago
    Not to mention that having the production capacity to meet initial demand on a popular product would be an huge waste of money. Best case scenario, a week or two after launch, the vast majority of that capacity would be sitting idle after the initial rush is over and the purchase rate tapers off. Worst case scenario, the product isn't as popular as you anticipated and you've got a big ol' writedown to deal with. (Atari anyone? Blackberry tablet?)
  - odbol_ 10y ago
    Plus, you can just go to any garage sale and buy one of the original consoles with 100s of games for like $20
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      I don't seek out garage sales but look for old Nintendos when I end up at one and I never see them, never mind for cheap with a pile of games.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  It spikes demand. Crazy parents run all over the place looking for it. The winners are Nintendo, who gets sales in the 1Q, which is normally death for this kind of product, and the retailers, who get parents visiting daily and buying other crap. My brother spent weeks looking for the "cream pie in the face game" last year. In the process, he picked up a half dozen other board games.
salmonet 10y ago
Nintendo deserves some of the blame. They most likely created this shortage on purpose to create press.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
This is one way that markets clear prices when demand edges production. There's are many ways to do it, for example auctions. In this case the price sensitivity of the market is lower than the producer set, so the market is willing to pay more for the good than the product is selling it at. When this pricing mismatch happens, there is the ability to close the pricing gap through repricing by a third party otherwise known as arbitrage. This is one of the more important functional requirements for a market and the producer can take advantage of this based on how they price. Nintendo could have priced the system much higher and seen the same output but it may not have made as big if a splash, so really it's Nintendo driving this frenzy because they and all other major companies are good at this. It's not a big it's a feature (really in this case).
metaphor 10y ago
Agreed. It's quite sad that the impetus is on Nintendo to flood the market with product. As of this post, there were 3,800+ posts on eBay[1]; there's at least an entire page-full listing Buy It Now @ $1000 or more. [1] http://www.ebay.com/sch/?_nkw=nes%20classic%20edition http://www.ebay.com/sch/?_nkw=nes%20classic%20edition
savanaly 10y ago
I feel like if you truly groked capitalism, you would be able to point out lots of its flaws, but also to realize that scalping is definitely not one of them. With supply limited like this, the optimal social outcome is for the X units produced to go to the X people in the world who would value them most, in other words the people who would be willing to pay the most (only exception I can think of to this is if someone values it at V dollars and only has a net worth of W dollars where W < V, but for the sums we're talking about with the NES I think almost everyone either has or can scrounge up V). In the final accounting with reselling on amazon, the goods end up where they are most highly valued. Sure, if we held a lottery to see who gets to buy the NESs at the sticker price rather than auctioning them, the people winning the lottery would be more happy than the people who end up winning the auction. But as a whole, society would be impoverished since it's an inefficient distribution (no room to prove it in a HN post, but it's not too hard to work out on paper when tallying up the welfare of nintendo, the scalpers and all the people who get to buy the NES under one scenario or the other).
- typicalrunt 10y ago
  I do understand capitalism, the point I made was that sometimes I don't have to like it. Scalping included. I don't need to prove my knowledge to you by pointing out lots of capitalism's flaws. Instead of reading my comment carefully, you decided to teach me about how basic supply and demand operate. Jesus, you are a self-absorbed piece of work.
  - savanaly 10y ago
    I'm truly sorry if my comment affected you negatively, it wasn't my intention. I used to be an econ tutor and sometimes my urge to just type my thoughts that way comes out and I regret that it sounds like lecturing. Anyways, why do you think that, given all that, scalping is a bad thing then? Isn't getting the goods to where they're valued most a good thing? Who's getting heartbroken here? The people who can't afford one at the market price of $600? But most of them weren't going to get one anyways because of the limited supply. If there's something to not like it's the scarcity, right?
inimino 10y ago
Why do you think this is morally bankrupt? We aren't talking about wheat, but a superfluous luxury item. Where's the moral argument?
morgante 10y ago
What exactly is "morally bankrupt" about buying a mispriced good and reselling it at a proper price? People get very morally righteous about scalping, but I don't understand why at all. Resellers are correcting a distortion in the market and providing a value-added service.
- pluma 10y ago
  The only value they add is amplifying the scarcity. How it normally works is this: * Some person sells something locally for $x * There is demand outside that location for the same product * Someone buys the product locally for $x and sells it elsewhere for $y > $x * Customers are provided access to a product they would otherwise not be aware of or not have access to, the reseller makes money from the margin, the producer can produce and sell more product, everybody wins How it works in this case: * Some person sells something for price $x at a limited quantity * Someone buys up all the product for $x and resells it for $y > $x * Customers are prevented from accessing the product at the original price, the reseller makes money from the margin, the producer doesn't gain any advantage, only the reseller wins Can you honestly not see how this is different? It's morally bankrupt because it offers no value to anyone and entirely profits from the charity of the producer who sells a product below market value. And in the worst case the reseller ends up with tons of unsold product and is forced to dump it later or even throw it away completely (which depending on the margins may still turn a profit overall).
  - makomk 10y ago
    I think it may even be possible to dump all the risk of the items not selling and storage costs onto the original seller due to quirks of how Amazon works.
z3t4 10y ago
With high margins more entreprenors will enter the market. But in this case nintendo have a monopoly.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. I don't know, but I shun, punish (by refusing to do business with them) and counter-market such people whenever I can. It's one thing to take a good and resell it for a larger price to a different audience; you're in essence making it more accessible and also take on some distribution headache, and thus deserve to cash in. That's how almost every brick and mortar store works. But it's another thing to buy off someone's stock only to turn around and resell it for more to the same customer base. That's, in my opinion, just plain sliminess.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
matwood 10y ago
> What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. In the end, I think these scalpers won't sell for 8x because anintendo will just pump out more product. Still, it is sad to see this happen. Morally? It's a video game. Scalpers are fine. Blame Nintendo for not making more of them or charging a higher price so the limited supply met demand. Everyone will have their NES Classic in a month or two.
nilved 10y ago
It might not have seemed that way in writing, but in reading your post is contradictory. If the motivation for a person to do this is lost on you, you don't grok capitalism; and if that bothers you, you don't like capitalism.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

Clearly thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of gamers were sitting on the product page hammering the F5 key and some random selection thereof got their wish. I highly doubt that. My guess is that third party resellers used bots to purchase them all. Why wouldn't tc come to the same conclusion? Edit. yep here's one on eBay for $500+: http://m.ebay.com/itm/New-Nintendo-NES-Classic-Edition-Console-30-classic-Games-included-In-Hand-/282251775042?hash=item41b7844c42%3Ag%3AdQgAAOSwB09YJQNg&_trkparms=pageci%253A0eaa36dd-a868-11e6-b61e-74dbd18070b6%257Cparentrq%253A55c26f941580a5eb36147d47fffca634%257Ciid%253A1 http://m.ebay.com/itm/New-Nintendo-NES-Classic-Edition-Conso...

minimaxir 10y ago
Nintendo has had a history of unexplainable supply shortages for in-demand items. (case in point: Amiibo)
- tostitos1979 10y ago
  Ha .. not unexplained. I am part of a few "deals" websites. People inexplicably want to collect all of them! They have predictions on what Amibos will sell out, so people can buy 'em sooner rather than later. Lots of crazy stuff. I thought it was to make a profit but it seems there are genuine collectors out there.
  - GFischer 10y ago
    Digital age Beanie Babies? http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/02/beanie_babies_bubble_economics_and_psychology_of_a_plush_toy_investment.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
    - jandrese 10y ago
      I've been calling them that for years.
- DanielleMolloy 10y ago

Kenji 10y ago

All of these outages could be prevented by opening sales randomly in time windows and in small waves. Or with preordering. The same applies to sales with price reductions, etc. All these companies shoot themselves in the foot with stunts like that. Why not make it more expensive if there is such a demand, anyway?

serge2k 10y ago
> Why not make it more expensive if there is such a demand Is demand really high enough to support a higher price? Nintendo is infamous for putting out a short supply. I don't understand why Amazon can't just take preorders for the next batch.

gm-conspiracy 10y ago

Only half of my Nintendo holiday arbitrage attempts have been successful. There will be limited availability for a short time, then a flood of product.

covercash 10y ago
When I was younger, half the fun was trying to obtain the limited availability consoles!! Now it's no longer fun, just refresh a page and hope resellers don't buy up inventory before you can grab one. I'm still impressed that my mom somehow managed to get me an n64 for that first Christmas they were available! I was in disbelief since I was certain they were impossible to get. 13yo me had all the local toy store #s memorized and I'd call every day asking if they received any shipments. No dice. Shadows of the Empire on Christmas morning was so awesome! Tripping up those AT-ATs that morning was one of the more memorable moments in my gaming history. A few months prior, for my best friend's September birthday, his mom took us to Toysrus and let him pick either the just released n64 +1 game OR the on-sale SegaCD and a bunch of games. He chose... poorly.

oxide 10y ago

This kind of stuff is par for the course with Nintendo hardware from what I can tell. Is it deliberate? If so, does perceived scarcity drive more sales, or are they just sick of warehousing unsold products?

matmann2001 10y ago
Well, they did just get free advertising in the form of this TechCrunch article. Wouldn't be surprised if other news outlets pick on up on the story as well, with the spin of "the hot new Christmas toy". From that perspective, having short supply on release day seems like a decent plan. Once they get the publicity, I bet the supply increases to match demand within the following month.

pingec 10y ago

Funny thing, they are in stock in the local electronics store in my small hometown in Slovenia :)

Keyframe 10y ago
Where at? I'm in Croatia and I really wanted to buy one!
mrfusion 10y ago
Go buy a batch and get on eBay.

nashashmi 10y ago

Anybody know if Sega Genesis is also coming out in similar fashion?

mantis369 10y ago
I doubt it. I walked past a whole shelf of Sega Genesis emulation boxes at Target. That and the Atari Flashback 7 seem to be heavily stocked.
skocznymroczny 10y ago
http://www.news.com.au/technology/home-entertainment/gaming/sega-mega-drive-back-in-production-after-growth-in-popularity/news-story/340821dd914c02616ca10e4838ee8503 http://www.news.com.au/technology/home-entertainment/gaming/...

darkstar999 10y ago

The Amazon reviews got brigaded with 1 star reviews. They should work on preventing this.

serge2k 10y ago
Why? Nintendo decided to once again screw over their fans with their supply games. People are getting back at them for it.
- caperstory 10y ago
  Patience!!!!!!!!! You are driving me insane! Go outside and play.
- LeoPanthera 10y ago
  Why? Because bitching at Nintendo is not a review of the product. Obviously.

IgorPartola 10y ago

Sounds like Nintendo, along with a bunch of other companies, need to take a page out of USSR's book. The way it worked there is that you put your name on the list to buy, say, a car. And when the car is actually manufactured, you get to buy it. Big product launches like this could really benefit from a system like that. I know some places already do this: x.ai comes to mind. They even had a thing where you could move yourself up in the queue by getting others to sign up.

kaoD 10y ago
How would this fix the problem? Botters would just bot the list instead. It worked in the USSR because USSR.
- gohrt 10y ago
  Name / address / Credit card registration.
ovao 10y ago
It is true that many consumers would benefit from such systems, but unfortunately, drumming up demand by trickling supply into the market is Nintendo's modus operandi.
dawnerd 10y ago
could have just done pre orders like apple and slip the shipping date as the list gets longer. It's not like companies don't have a solution. It's just Nintendo being Nintendo.
MrFoof 10y ago
This actually does happen with some car manufacturers. The one I'm most familiar with (having experience with the process) is Porsche with their GT cars and "collector grade vehicles". Want the next 911 GT3 RS? The best way to guarantee you get one is to give a dealer a deposit (usually just $5000) for "the next GT3 RS" at least 3 years before the vehicle is officially announced. You do have to wait for that dealer to get an allocation (so often you'll place a deposit with multiple dealers who sell a lot of 911s), but when they pop you get yours assuming you were early enough in line. A few long-term repeat customers may get bumped ahead of you in line, but at the end of the day you'll get your car. There was a lot of anger at the availability of the Cayman GT4, but despite never being a prior Porsche owner I had the opportunity to pass on it twice (for a much harder to get Boxster Spyder) because I knew how the process went, and had deposits for non-existant cars with multiple dealers years before they were announced.

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago

Amazon should do popular items like this using a lottery system to hurt the advantage bots, scripts, and people with lower latency have. - You can enter the item lottery for a longer period (e.g. 60 minutes). - Lottery winners are picked at random, not based on entry time. - Max one entry per household (remove entries with duplicate mailing addresses, duplicate credit cards, and duplicate email addresses). - Once someone wins they have a window to purchase (e.g. 3 hours). If they fail to purchase then the lottery picks a new winner. Now obviously cheats will still exist, but at least they're all on a fairer playing field with normal purchasers.

gohrt 10y ago
MBA Interview pro-tip: Amazon should make NES a Prime-only item.
- mrfusion 10y ago
  Wow very smart! How do businesses not think of these things? I even got an impression from their nes classic page like they were saying "meh, we are not really sure if we sell this why do you want it"
- Jach 10y ago
  https://www.amazon.com/treasuretruck https://www.amazon.com/treasuretruck had it today.
  - btgeekboy 10y ago
    Also sold out in minutes.

madengr 10y ago

I wonder if these things are timed for release once a target audience hits a certain age? What is that age? It was about 8 years between 1st gen consoles (Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision) and 2nd gen (Nintendo). The retro-rerelease of 1st gen was about 8 years ago. I am 45 and am nostalgic about 1st gen. I was in high school for 2nd gen; no nostalgia, uninterested. So do these retro-rerelease target those in their late 30's. Mid life crisis yearning for nostalgia?

gohrt 10y ago
What was the "Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision" retro-release? Seems like a newish phenomenon due to falling cost of production. Objectively, (if you put a complete novice kid in front of a console), NES and SNES's good/great games are the best.
- km3k 10y ago
  madengr is right, the Atari ones have been available since 2004. They've put out a new version of it every other year or so. This year is their 7th version of the Atari Flashback. https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Flashback-7-Classic-Game-Console/dp/B01KV6E6Z2 https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Flashback-7-Classic-Game-Consol... There's ones for Intellivision (https://www.amazon.com/IntelliVision-AtGames-Flashback-Classic-Game-Console/dp/B00K2BOG66 https://www.amazon.com/IntelliVision-AtGames-Flashback-Class... ) and Colecovision ( https://www.amazon.com/ColecoVision-AtGames-Flashback-Classic-Game-Console/dp/B00NM9R6GW https://www.amazon.com/ColecoVision-AtGames-Flashback-Classi... ) too, but those have only been available for the last few years.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    And there's been a Sega Genesis Classic Game Console (with 80 games) since 2012 or so. https://amzn.com/B01KV6E72O https://amzn.com/B01KV6E72O
robk 10y ago
I think probably the band of people born from about 1975-82 are probably the right segment. http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/04/us-births-per-year.html http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/04/us-births-per-year...

greenmountin 10y ago

Thought of this when I was browsing AliExpress for Singles Day, today, and found this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Video-Game-Projector-PGS-Console-built-in-8bit-NES-Childhood-Games-with-2-Joystick-Support-Dual/32526098498.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Video-Game-Projector-PGS-Con... Available cheap for another 8 hours, maybe something to tide them over?

lucaspiller 10y ago
The fact that these projectors have such low resolution, playing retro games is about all they are good for.

mrfusion 10y ago

Why doesn't Nintendo just raise their prices to where supply equals demand? They're leaving So much money on the table for scalpers. Or why not first release an expensive limited edition while they scale up production?

metaphor 10y ago
Hindsight is 20/20.
Retric 10y ago
Bad press.
- corysama 10y ago
  Yep. It would be very bad for the brand if the device came out at a very high price initially. Nintendo has to pick a price for the long term, ship with it and stick with it. Short term profit opportunities would have a very large long term cost.
jonknee 10y ago
Because now they get to be on the news with a bunch of stories talking about how hot their new product is.
- reustle 10y ago
  Exactly. I wouldn't have even known they released an official NES-raspberry-pi-esque product otherwise.
danhak 10y ago
Because the value of the free marketing they've just generated dwarfs the value that's being captured by scalpers.
wepple 10y ago
these things would've cost next to nothing to make, and they figure they can sell a large enough volume at a low price that they'd net more than upping the price slightly and selling substantially less.

mrfusion 10y ago

It seems silly to me to allocate a product by the vageries of refresh rates and server responsiveness. It seems like Amazon could come up with many other ideas for allocating a limited product. There's no rule that says it has to be based on the millisecond ordered. For example how about a game of chance (or skill?) to let people compete for the product? It would feel a lot more fulfilling than an error page. And it would give them good brand interaction.

d23 10y ago
Eh, or what about loyalty to amazon? If they had honestly messaged me and said that because of the age of my account and amount I had spent that I would get to be part of the first group in line to purchase, I might have even bought one just for that reason. Not that they needed more people buying them, but my loyalty to them would probably only go up.
- ianai 10y ago
  On the flip side, stuff like this just sours the whole thing. Why have a sign up page to be alerted when something's available if you know it's going to be sold out immediately?
ianai 10y ago
Was there even any sign that this was going to be under supplied like this? I didn't get that impression from the reviews/previews I read.

chuckreynolds 10y ago

idk what happened but at 1400PST on the money i loaded it... "add to cart" and "buy now" buttons were there but their function was inoperable. That page was broken for hours after that. And now it just says not available. ugh

Waterluvian 10y ago

Honestly, I was going to buy one. But the itch will probably pass by the time they're back in stock. Since I'm filling that itch with emulators now. At an impulse buy price point, I wonder how many unrecoverable lost sales are caused by lack of supply.

ben174 10y ago
Agreed. All the sell-out did was frustrate me a bit then set me on a mission to create the ultimate all-in-one raspberry pi image.
- efdee 10y ago
  Mission accomplished? I would be interested ;-)
- ashark 10y ago
  Put lakka on an SD card. Put your roms on one of those super-cheap 128gb USB sticks that exist these days. Use PS3 controllers. Done. http://www.lakka.tv http://www.lakka.tv (I know I've posted lakka twice in this thread, but I'm not affiliated, just a happy user)

swang 10y ago

i continuously got an empty shopping cart everytime i tried to add it. i am pretty sure the site was hit so hard they just 404'd the URL so it wouldn't load anything. for a while the item page was blank while amazon.com continued to load.

yayitswei 10y ago

What's the (null) for in the headline? Nintendowned: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in (null) seconds

everfree 10y ago
If I had to guess it's probably a non-programmer trying to be clever, even though (null) doesn't make any sense in the context.

elcapitan 10y ago

The little machine is nice, but I wish they simply had some kind of an app store for old game ROMs. I would pay the price of a mobile game for old Mario Bros etc. Instead I have to download them from shady sources.

ixixix 10y ago
Umm, ever heard of virtual console on the Wii and Wii U?
- elcapitan 10y ago
  I don't need a Wii, I just want to play the old games (alongside with old Atari and Sega).

joshbaptiste 10y ago

Nintendo needs to come out with an official retro wifi appliance that allows one to buy classic games from an App Store and play 2 player games over the network.

thenormal 10y ago

Days spent in my childhood...

fuqted 10y ago

I had the chance to buy one yesterday morning and I didn't take it up. That was my first hearing about it and I gotta say, beyond resell value I don't see the appeal of this thing. You can make a smaller NES with a Pi Zero and rented time on a 3D printer. I don't think people would have a problem trading use of cartridges for a much larger, cross platform selection. Is this a business opportunity?

Jotra7 10y ago
Found the guy that has never tried emulation on a Pi.
- nawtacawp 10y ago
  Can you elaborate? Ive never used an emulator. I'm thinking NES games have a very low need for cpu / mem resources. Do they not run as good as the original?
  - brians 10y ago
    They had a bunch of special purpose chips that make emulation hard---both computationally intensive, and finnicky around details. For example, a real NES will glitch differently when many sprites are on the same row. Some games depend on this to be playable!
  - Jotra7 10y ago
    There are sound output bugs that make using any emulator terrible. The Pi 3 can barely handle SNES games.
  - everfree 10y ago
    I've tried an emulation box with RetroPie and the controller drivers are hard to find (at least for xbox 360 wired controller), the controls are difficult to set up (requiring manual edits to config files, which you need to plug a keyboard into your rpi to do), the controls are glitchy after you set them up, and the interface is not intuitive at all. If someone has a better idea for pi emulation I would really like to try it.

cube00 10y ago

They may have all 'sold' but there are 4,000+ available on eBay at the moment.

strikeZ 10y ago

"Nintendowned: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in (null) seconds" This is the headline I am seeing at the moment. Seems like the guy who was supposed to update the time forgot to do so.

michaelbuddy 10y ago

It'd be one thing if the product just came out, had a lot of media fanfare and sold out due to low volume. I mean that's reality right. But the fact that it appeared in weekly ads for stores all over the country. It's really expectation that hurts the most. That's just causing hassle, distrust. Retail employees probably don't lke to get 50 extra calls a day for a product that will be in stock for 14 seconds. If I were a regional mgr I'd put VERY heavy pressure on corporate for say Target to NOT show ads for this product until reasonable levels of stock are guaranteed. Targets around the country got about 11 units. The one I went to only had 1 spare controller. Keep in mind that a good portion of the NES games are co-op. There are 1800 target stores in the U.S. If they all got 11 units that means there were only 19,000 units for that store. I heard gamestops got about 5. Walmarts got about 6 units each. So 6 units to walmarts 5229 stores is about 31375 unit. Gamestops 4,434 stores at 5 units each get 21700 Who knows what amazon stocked at. Would it be reasonable to say amazon got 10000 units? I mean they sold out in a minute. Maybe it was less than that. So those totals add up to 82,075 units. Let's round up, not forgetting the Best Buys, Microcenters, mom-pop shops and The 800 Toys R Us stores in the U.S. and say the United States got maybe 112,000 units total for the release.

DarkMetatron 10y ago

It is such an overrated product, I have one, tried it and will send it back to amazon asap. It is Bad in so many levels, the short Controller cable is only one.

Graziano_M 10y ago
The short controller would suck, but it's kind of a requirements for compatibility with the wiimote. It 'speaks' i2c and at the data rates they require it's unlikely they could go much longer.