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Nintendo Discontinues the NES Classic Edition
- socalnate1 10y agoNintendo makes the most confusing business decisions.
- cyphax 10y agoI know right?! Either that, or they know something I don't. They could probably make a lot more from selling these. It's like they don't need it and want to keep it limited in numbers, which doesn't rhyme with how many original NES' were sold and how OK they were with that. :) Or maybe they want to start selling NES titles on the Switch and they don't want to compete with themselves or something?
- azeirah 10y ago> they know something I don't Am I weird for thinking that it's very likely that an entire company with over 100 years of experience _does_ know something that you don't?
- greedo 10y agoInstitutional knowledge gets lost everytime an employee dies or leaves the company.
- mattnewton 10y agoWell, they can think they know something that isn't true anymore. I've seen it before at companies, the circumstances leading up to their success are often repeated as sacrosanct steps not to be questioned.
- EpicEng 10y agoIf only it worked that way. Besides, Wii U anyone? They have plenty of recent fumbles we could bring up.
- brilliantcode 10y agoAnytime I see Switch mentioned, I think about nintendo's ol' switcheroo 22 years ago that ultimately outdid nintendo.
- aaronbrethorst 10y agoAre you referring to the Pokemon Company?
- scrame 10y agoMore likely the Sony drive for SNES that they scrapped and Sony made into the playstation.
- brilliantcode 10y agoYes, it's my favorite story. tl;dr: Sony gets backstabbed by Nintendo, proceeds to destroy them in their own staple industry for the next few decades by releasing Sony Playstation.
- notadoc 10y agoYou'd expect some virtual console on the Switch but that is still missing the point of the NES Classic, which is cheap enough to be an impulse buy or a gift, and cashes in on the nostalgia of an entire generation. I know a lot of people who haven't played video games since they were kids who wanted the NES Classic, it has a unique appeal.
- duskwuff 10y agoThe only possible explanation I can think of is that a replacement product is in the works (e.g, wider game selection, SNES support, downloadable games, etc). Otherwise... WTF.
- Asooka 10y agoThat product is called the Switch.
- wernercd 10y agoThe Switch has a lesser appeal than a $50 box that has a lifetime of nostalgia.
- tartuffe78 10y agoNot for everybody, and not for most people I'd wager.
- chc 10y agoThe Switch doesn't have any NES or SNES games for it at all.
- chadgeidel 10y ago*yet I would be shocked if the Virtual Console wasn't running on the Switch by the end of the year.
- metaphorm 10y agorumor mill suggests as early as this summer
- trapperkeeper79 10y agoThey really have the worst supply chain out there. A bunch of people I know wanted this and/or the Switch. These are casual gamers who may not care later.
- takeda 10y agoReleasing it or discontinuing it? Discontinuation makes sense, because that console was a dead end, you couldn't add more games etc, so IMO it was more of a novelty. As for releasing, it would be better if they make it not a dead end product. Someone mentioned here that many chips using there were already EOL when it was released, so maybe this was a creative way to get rid of some components and make money out of them that otherwise they would throw away?
- chc 10y ago> Discontinuation makes sense, because that console was a dead end, you couldn't add more games etc, so IMO it was more of a novelty. That doesn't make much sense. Not everyone who currently wants one has got one. They're absolutely flying off shelves. You wouldn't discontinue something like that because it's "a novelty."
- takeda 10y agoYou would, if you would run out of components to build them. All I'm saying is that when they came up with it, they planned it to be a dead end, e.g. fixed number of games, no ability to purchase games (either physically or download from internet), build using components that are EOL and no longer being produced...
- EpicEng 10y agoA "novelty" with massive demand and no supply. I don't get your logic.
- padobson 10y agoExactly this. Nintendo and Twitter are extremely similar. Twitter lucked into an AAA product, and management hasn't been able to leverage it to anything like the Facebook competitor it should have been. Nintendo lucked into hiring a game design genius (Miyamoto) who also happened to be a great mentor and producer, meaning they've had a steady stream of AAA games for 30+ years. If either one of these companies had great CEOs, they would easily be dominating their respective industries.
- astrange 10y agoNintendo has had several great CEOs who are no longer with us.
- EpicEng 10y agoNintendo is a 127 year old company. Pretty sure they didn't stagnate for 100 years before finally hitting their stride with Miyamoto.
- padobson 10y ago70 years of being a family-owned, regional playing-card company is pretty much the definition of stagnation. Hiroshi Yamauchi deserves credit for having the vision to expand into electronic games, but nothing they did before Miyamoto could truly be considered a market-shaping event. Other than switching to electronics and hiring Miyamoto, Yamauchi was a middling CEO at best. Super Mario is one of the most recognizable characters in the world. The NES sold 60 million units. The SNES sold 50 million units. If a great CEO had been running Nintendo at any point since ~1983, Nintendo would be Disney right now.
- bobajeff 10y agoIt's important to understand that some business decisions aren't based off of money. Sometimes they are based on the emotions of the people working at the company. Like a TV network cancelling a series with good ratings because an executive wants to put something else in it's slot to further his legacy. Or a company hiring and promoting someone unqualified because they remind the director of themselves earlier in life. Or a game company ending a successful series because the head of software was tired of making it.
- Raphmedia 10y agoI've always heard of Nintendo that they only cared for the Japan market and that all else was simply an happy side effect.
- indy 10y agoThis reminds me of Disney releasing one of their classic films for a limited time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault) In the future if Nintendo were to re-release the NES Classic (or a SNES Classic) the demand, hype and publicity would be astronomical.
- mcphage 10y ago> This reminds me of Disney releasing one of their classic films for a limited time I believe that decision almost killed Disney—they stopped making new films, and they made their classic films difficult or impossible to come by, and ended up with kids that didn't know or care who any of their characters were. I'm glad they turned that one around.
- matthewbauer 10y agoI think they'll bring it back later for maximum kitsch value like McDonald's does with the McRib.
- bnj 10y agoMaybe it was eating into attention for the switch Or maybe in additional to supply issues it was relatively expensive to produce?
- handruin 10y agoTough to say for sure regarding taking attention from the Switch but from what I've seen the Switch is still selling out very quickly from retailers. That makes me believe there is still high demand. It could be that their virtual console once-released may be in competition for sales of classic games.
- codebeaker 10y agoThere had been some speculation on Reddit that it was a run of near-obsolete hardware proposed by one of their partners. Some teardown (I can't find a source now) found out that it was shipping with already EOL'ed components that weren't available for back-order from the fabs. If anyone has more information than my 3rd hand comment, I'd be super interested. I was very disappointed not to find one for sale for a reasonable price. I would have loved one.
- rincebrain 10y agoI'm surprised that even in that case, they wouldn't just iterate on components and then come out with it again once they've managed to debug any fun quirks that come from trying to iterate on the hardware and got fabbing capacity ramped up. On the other hand, Nintendo's been burned before by apparently-boundless demand for, say, the Wii U, and then incredibly sharp dropoff, so they might just be going heavily conservative on the possible profit/possible cost to update.
- wernercd 10y agoIf they can iterate, increase the value (more games? SNES? Gameboy? etc) and "fix" the DRM "issue" (Ability to hack it... I know that's gotta be burning them up)...
- rincebrain 10y agoI mean, the more trivial way to lock it down would be to have a truly read-only OS partition, rather than apparently trying slightly (based on my quick skimming of the ways to manipulate the device). That would forbid dynamic updates (which would let them play cat-and-mouse with fixing holes, if they were so inclined), but would also avoid most things that would require replacing the OS stack. e: They also clearly knew they weren't building a fortress, given the note buried in the image of "Many efforts, tears and countless hours have been put into this jewel. So, please keep this place tidied up and don't break everything!"
- 4rt 10y ago
- mod50ack 10y agoActually a decently hackable box. Stuck N64 and SNES support on it.
- aanm1988 10y agooh well, at least they haven't fucked me over w.r.t. the switch yet.
- accountyaccount 10y agoNintendo certainly makes it difficult to consistently play their old titles.
- stale2002 10y agoIt's actually super easy. Just go to the pirate bay and download an emulator.
- 542458 10y agoTo legally play their old titles then. And anyways, that's not Nintendo making it easy, that's the people who build emulators and rip ROMs making it easy.
- lightedman 10y agoIt is legal. I have every single NES cart I've ever owned sitting in storage. Format-shifting is perfectly legal.
- kod 10y agoDownloading roms from pirate bay is not legal, regardless of whether you have the NES cart sitting in storage.
- lightedman 10y agoThe EFF says otherwise. https://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php https://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php Also see the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision.
- joosters 10y agoDownloading a torrent has more complications that mere time-shifting. Users are also distributing copyrighted software to other torrent clients. (unless you've completely disabled uploads in your torrent app) Owning a cartridge may give you the ability to legally download the same software but it certainly doesn't give you permission to supply copyrighted works to other people.
- notadoc 10y agoSeems odd, there is still huge demand for this thing. Why discontinue it?
- vermontdevil 10y agoI think they want you to buy Switch and put all $ and focus on that.
- fred256 10y agoFrom the moment this was launched I had wanted to buy one but never could find one in stock at MSRP. Eventually just built a RetroPie box :/
- lcfcjs 10y agoI think many people will do this, plus you get SNES too :)
- mrfusion 10y agoHow hard was it to build? Any tips?
- thesandlord 10y agoIt's fairly straightforward, even if you've never set up a RPi before. Once you set up the SD card, it is all GUI based. I'd recommend a RPi3, USB controller(s) (Xbox controllers work great) and a case. https://retropie.org.uk/ https://retropie.org.uk/
- CWuestefeld 10y agoI started from here: https://retropie.org.uk/ https://retropie.org.uk/ It was actually quite simple. Starting from opening the box on the RPi, that I'd never touched before, being kind of a Linux moron, and tracking down the necessary hardware (an old TV and USB joystick, and some networking stuff), I had it running in just a couple of hours. The only thing that slowed me down at all was figuring out how to copy ROM files onto it through the network.
- joshschreuder 10y agoI just set it up on my Intel NUC and it was quite easy (particularly if you have some basic Linux experience - running scripts etc.). I even managed to get my PS4 and Switch Pro controllers hooked up via BT.
- mysterydip 10y agoAlong with what everyone else said (I've set up retropie, follow the instructions and aside from some quirks it's easy), there's a handful of 3d printed cases you can get for that extra retro feel. Here's a few examples, some people offer for purchase: https://all3dp.com/raspberry-pi-nintendo-nes-case/ https://all3dp.com/raspberry-pi-nintendo-nes-case/
- faragon 10y agoIn my opinion, Nintendo should release a FPGA-based NES/SNES, with low latency joypads, and perfect audio and video (including advanced filters for "clean" and "perfectly distorted" experience). That, plus a "market" so they can ensure profits, would be huge, both for them, and for the users.
- chadgeidel 10y agoThe "Analogue Nt" fits the bill, but it's a pretty pricey option: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/07/analogue-nt-a-museum-grade-nes-for-a-museum-grade-price/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/07/analogue-nt-a-museum-... I don't know how low-latency the RetroN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RetroN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RetroN) is but you can use the original games and gamepads with that. I think it's android-based, so it's a software emulator.
- faragon 10y agoSure. Exactly that. If Nintendo puts that FPGA into an ASIC, in volume it could cost less than 20 USD per chip.
- kidbeta 10y agoIts not nintendo but from everything i can find its a pretty faithful reproduction of the hardware for a reasonablish price. https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/12/retrousb-avs-review/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/12/retrousb-avs-review/ .I havent gotten one yet but I have been mighty tempted.
- faragon 10y agoRetroUSB AVS is not a full hardware implementation, but a cartridge reader + software emulation, i.e. you'll have over 30ms delay (16.6ms * 2), because of framebuffer synchronization.
- cableshaft 10y agoArrgh! I saw several of these sitting on the counter of a Gamestop just last week, but instead decided 'No, I was just able to get two Switch consoles. That's enough for today. I'll grab one of those in a week or two." Now with this sudden announcement, no doubt those have vanished and I won't see one again without paying as much as a Switch ($300+) for one. Thanks, Nintendo. You're really listening to your fans here.
- petercooper 10y agoDiscontinued despite never making it to Amazon or even the Nintendo store in the UK for retail price after the preorder! I'm guessing Nintendo isn't too bothered by people using emulators if they're withdrawing paid alternatives like this.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoNintendo continue to selling classics via their Virtual Console/store.
- joemi 10y agoI thought it did make it to Amazon for retail price but it sold out pretty instantly?
- rapt 10y agoI have been hoping for an snes edition, but since the switch is doing so well, I highly doubt we will see it in the near future.
- dbg31415 10y agoDon't worry! It's very easy to build a RetroPie box! * RetroPie - Retro-gaming on the Raspberry Pi || https://retropie.org.uk/ https://retropie.org.uk/
- dfar1 10y ago1.5 million sold... any chance this will have any value in 50 years?
- lr4444lr 10y agoI'm just gonna put this out there with no citations or proof: this controller[0] had the best hand feel of any console controller ever. [0]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Nintendo-Entertainment-System-NES-Controller-FL.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Nintendo...
- sparky_ 10y agoThe device has evidently been rooted to allow flashing other NES roms. I wonder if that had something to do with it.
- pvaldes 10y agoIt seems that greasemonkey anti-aede works also inside HN. Didn't know. Nice.
- mikejmoffitt 10y agoI'm sure a lot of people are going to recommend RetroPie and other emulation packages. I'm going to recommend against general-purpose emulation if you enjoy the games in question: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2019/an-input-lag-investigation/2 https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2019/an-input-lag-invest...
- EpicEng 10y agoWhy that? I've been emulating nes and snes games for nearly twenty years now with no issues. Not clear why you recommend against it from reading your link.
- 15charlimit 10y agoI figured they would actually have to start producing something in order to "discontinue" it though? /s Have yet to see stock anywhere except through scalpers. Nintendo continues to have a huge supply problem with basic availability of hardware, for whatever reason. Would buy one in a heartbeat. Not going to reward a scumbag scalper by spending a penny over MSRP to do so though.
- partycoder 10y agoWhile sad, there are good emulators for the NES/Famicom. With a proper display and a controller you may not notice a substantial difference. Now, while emulators are legal, ROMs may not. I wish Nintendo and others could release a desktop version of their legacy games shop. I understand their business is "software sells hardware", but in the case of legacy games they could bring more revenue if they were a bit more open.
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoHow disappointing. I was hoping Nintendo was taking a lesson from Steam: if you make it stupid easy to pay and play games then people will pay for them. NES Classic was a way to, legally, play a whole bunch of old Nintendo games without resorting to cheap emulators and pirated games that many, many gamers resort to. I'm hoping they're going to re-release this in the near future or something similar that is at a similar price point but let's you play a back catalog of NES, SNES and N64 games. If they had a legal way for me to do that I would pick it up in a heart beat. I guess the alternative is offering all these classic games on the Switch but is the target audience really the same? A $300 handheld versus a $60 dedicated classic TV console? I also wonder if Nintendo could destroy the market of cheap / gimmicky consoles that you can buy for like $50 that include "150 games!". Release something that anyone can afford, hook it up to an e-store and let game devs release cheap games on it. It would be like hooking up the N64 / SNES / NES consoles with online services. I think I rambled a little bit but hopefully it made sense.
- davidjnelson 10y agoI don't see why they don't release a "Mini steam" that allows nes/snes/n64/gameCube/wii games to be purchased and run on a pc via an official/bundled emulator.
- emodendroket 10y ago> I also wonder if Nintendo could destroy the market of cheap / gimmicky consoles that you can buy for like $50 that include "150 games!". Release something that anyone can afford, hook it up to an e-store and let game devs release cheap games on it. It would be like hooking up the N64 / SNES / NES consoles with online services. I mean, really, a million companies have tried it and found it didn't work. You'd have to really bank on Nintendo name recognition to think there is a chance.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago> I mean, really, a million companies have tried it and found it didn't work. You'd have to really bank on Nintendo name recognition to think there is a chance. I agree and I think it would really work for Nintendo because they actually have tons of older games people would want whereas many of the attempts in the past offered only indie or no-name games. In my opinion Nintendo is literally the only company that could pull it off.
- davexunit 10y agoI got lucky and was able to get a pre-order of the initial batch. However, I didn't get a second controller which now seems very foolish. Looking around it seems that $30 is as cheap as I can expect to find one.
- CodeTheInternet 10y agoIs it more feasible to find an original NES controller and swap out the connector?
- ourmandave 10y agoI suppose the ones on Ebay prices tripled on this news.
- misingnoglic 10y agoThis is absolutely ridiculous, if they just supplied it correctly (something I was hoping they would learn to do by now) this thing would literally be free money for Nintendo. Or that's what it seems like to me - I know I would have at least bought one if it was available for the holiday season. How do they always underestimate the supply that they need?
- mtimjones 10y agoNintendo should follow this announcement with a new NES classic edition that has a few more games but twice the price.
- sdadasrty 10y agoI didn't buy the NES Classic Edition (not interested in living room consoles), but it would be an instabuy if Nintendo made another run of the Gameboy with 30 good games for ~$50.