Funny thing, they are in stock in the local electronics store in my small hometown in Slovenia :)
Where at? I'm in Croatia and I really wanted to buy one!
Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute
51–60 of 254 posts
Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute
#52I 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 happ…
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 opportu…
We're not talking about "smart and clever individuals" here. We're talking about scalper bots gaming the system by buying all of the product literally seconds after the seller flipped the switch. This isn't fair for the consumer at all as the product has literally been taken hostage by some third-party with unfair advantage. It's the 21st century equivalent to plundering trade routes.
Also, I don't think the nature of the product has any influence on the morals of the practice, I find it despicable no matter what is being sold.
Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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.
I don't see how people buying knockoff (but in-stock!) consoles will hep Nintendo sell more Nintendos
Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute
#54Thought of this when I was browsing AliExpress for Singles Day, today, and found this:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Video-Game-Projector-PGS-Con...
Available cheap for another 8 hours, maybe something to tide them over?
Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute
#55I 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…
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.
Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't agree that arbitrage hurts consumers (in most cases.) As I said in my sibling comment, arbitrage hurts producers —but it tends to help consumers. If you assume that a good is finite by definition (e.g. a concert ticket), then arbitrage helps the good reach the people who value it the most. Imagine a world where all concert tickets, no matter where in the stadium they are, cost $60. Imagine that there is no su…
Arbitrage does not help consumers. Arbitrage helps the subset of consumers that can afford the higher prices, but it hurts the consumers that can't. Your example with concert tickets only makes sense if all consumers have the same amount of discretionary income, but that's not representative of the real world.
The thing is, in the case where arbitrage doesn't exist, people without discretionary income still lose—because people with discretionary income can trade that income for someone else's time, which they can use to reserve more slots in any sort of a non-monetarily-determined distribution system (paying them to stand in line for them to get a first-come-first-served finite good; paying them to enter a raffle for them; etc.)
Adding arbitrage just makes this process more efficient, by allowing the richer consumers to express their desires directly, rather than having to hire someone (or, more likely, pay a service to hire someone, or use someone they already retain for miscellaneous tasks) to spend their time (exchanged for money) to acquire the good. Either way, richer consumers will preferentially acquire goods in a market; that's one of the fundamental properties of markets, and can't really be divorced from them.
Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute
#57Sounds 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…
How would this fix the problem? Botters would just bot the list instead. It worked in the USSR because USSR.
Name / address / Credit card registration.
Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute
#58Amazon 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 som…
MBA Interview pro-tip: Amazon should make NES a Prime-only item.
Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Plus, you can just go to any garage sale and buy one of the original consoles with 100s of games for like $20
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.
Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute
#60Clearly 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-Conso...
Makes for a good story. I mean, how many would they have made? 2,000? They know they can do a second run before Christmas. By then they would know if they should make 20,000 or 200,000...
Traditionally, toy companies will have a "tent pole" item they hype up and sell out of before Christmas (originally Cabbage Patch Kids but later on Elmo, Wii, etc.) This forces parents to less desirable accessory products for Christmas. Mysteriously after Christmas the tent pole item is in stock.
Eric Clark's book "The Real Toy Story" goes into the origin of this and other trends [1]. Nobody is really wild about the idea, but the industry is kind of forced into it because sales are literally all within a 3 week period. Miss it and you're dead. Tactics like the 'high demand, low availability' hot Christmas toy are a matter of survival.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Real-Toy-Story-Ruthless-Consumers/dp/...