The whole supply thing always struck me a very fine balancing act overall, Nintendo were aiming for a limited supply but by underestimating demand it looked cra

The whole supply thing always struck me a very fine balancing act overall, Nintendo were aiming for a limited supply but by underestimating demand it looked crazier than it really was. If Nintendo released enough Mini-NESs last year to match the demand, by this point right now there would be thousands upon thousands of them lying around doing nothing and being resold for every decreasing prices. Most people surely bought it because the box was cute and/or it was a remarkably easy gift for someone, I can't imagine many of them are getting much use right now. With an awareness they're no longer on sale and somewhat in-demand, people are going to less likely to get rid of theirs. By not satisfying demand they're managing to avoid long-term damage to the value of NES nostalgia. Along with that, not only would saturating the market effectively kill the chances of simply rereleasing it for another wave of hype and high sales in a few years, it'd also potentially greatly cripple the market value of the games on the machine. Nintendo have made a killing from re-releasing Super Mario Bros alone over and over, if it's on the virtual store right now I imagine it's gotta be at least $5. That's achieved by treating it like a thing of value, not the kind of thing you find on some cheap "RETRO CLASSICS" type bundle, preventing the NES-mini from feeling disposable helps prevent the games on it from feeling worthless. TL;DR? They're doing an approach which has worked very effectively for another company in the entertainment industry http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Disney_Vault http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Disney_Vault