SNES Classic hits retail Sept. 29 and it promises to be one of the hottest toys this holiday season. If you aren’t able to score a pre-order, here are five reasons you should expect a battle to find one at launch.
1) It’s A Limited Run For Diehard Fans: In contrast to the poor communication exhibited during the NES Classic craze, Nintendo has been very upfront about the production run of its successor. According to an official statement to Kotaku, there are no plans to produce the console beyond 2017, and it’s a product designed “in special recognition of the fans who show tremendous interest in our classic content.”
In other words, Nintendo is telling the public this is a limited edition product made for only the most hardcore fans. In case you’re having trouble reading between the lines, that’s marketing speak for “we’re not making many of these.”
2) It Comes With Two Controllers: Unlike the NES Classic, the SNES Classic comes with everything consumers need in a single box. That includes two controllers for multiplayer action. It’s a nice gesture, but it’s also a giant red flag that “everything about this product is going to sell out instantly, and we don’t want folks to be left without a second remote.”
3) A Jammed Hardware Pipeline: A company only has so many resources it can allocate to hardware production, and Nintendo has a ton of new devices it needs to get into people’s hands very quickly. First and foremost, the Nintendo Switch continues to sell like hotcakes. With a strong library of exclusives headed into the holidays, that hype will continue. As Nintendo’s flagship console, the goal is to put as many Switches into the wild as possible. On the second tier, you also have four different versions of the 3DS family to provide for as well.
With so much product headed to market at once, how much space can truly be allocated for something that won’t even live long enough to see the 2018 calendar year? The answer is, not much at all.
4) The Pre-Order Situation: As far as SNES Classic pre-orders are concerned, it’s been a tale of two regions. Reservations started in the UK shortly after the system was announced, and stocks depleted within minutes. On the U.S. side we haven’t seen any pre-orders at all.
Those details are potentially very revealing. The fact that the UK’s stock sold out immediately proves Nintendo isn’t promising retailers too many to sell. As for the U.S., there are a few theories being floated right now. One of them is that pre-orders haven’t begun because Nintendo has yet to nail down its own shipment expectations. The same thing happened with the NES Classic, and it wasn’t a pretty situation.
5) Nintendo’s History: As any Nintendo fan will know, this company’s hardware has almost always been notoriously hard to find. That’s because every single console since the NES has launched with belief in a strategy called manufactured demand. In other words, if people can’t find something, they’ll want to buy it. Beyond the NES Classic fiasco, that reality was very present during the early days of the Wii.
As a very traditional Japanese toy company, it seems unlikely Nintendo would change its formula now. Taking a look at the latest Switch stock reports doesn’t exactly instill confidence in anything else. This is Nintendo, and Nintendo will do what Nintendo has always done.
The SNES Classic comes to retail Sept. 29 for $79.
Do you think the SNES Classic will be easy to find? Will the U.S. ever get pre-orders? Tell us in the comments section!
