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

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

#172

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.

Umm, ever heard of virtual console on the Wii and Wii U?

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

#173

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 happ…

> 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.

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

#175

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-Conso...

This has been going on since the first days of ecom. It's just scripters and bots that are more easy to get ahold of now so even more people do it. But the demand is real if you look at the completed auctions! Scammers don't let the auctions complete since they have to pay fees on them. There are a shocking number of people who just don't mind paying up for something hot.

Disclosure: I did it in college for beer money - http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/us/sony-toy-is-less-costly...

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

#176
post #172

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.

Umm, ever heard of virtual console on the Wii and Wii U?

I don't need a Wii, I just want to play the old games (alongside with old Atari and Sega).

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

#177
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia, the NES Classic Edition came out on Thursday - the physical copies at Target etc. too were sold out in minutes, too. Some of the Facebook comments said that their local shop only got a few boxes which were gone mmediately: https://www.facebook.com/NintendoAUNZ/videos/714922218664914... As usual, Nintendo doesn't get their customers and is completely unprepared.

I think they know exactly what they're doing. Selling out in minutes causes news stories, and here we are.

Doing things for press coverage in order to get an increase in future sales is a great idea for a startup with limited marketing funds, but Nintendo aren't exactly in that position. The fact is Nintendo failed to supply a sufficient amount of their product, and that has created a demand in a secondary market. All of the profit generated in that secondary market would have gone to Nintendo if they'd managed their supply properly.

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

#179
post #47

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…

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...

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

A problem I see is that the reseller is getting money for creating an artificial scarcity (buying off the stock of the original seller). It doesn't feel to me like an ethical behaviour. You portray it as making an unsolicited offering to the Gods of the Market on behalf of the original seller, but I don't think many people find a positive value in that. On the other hand, compare an example situations without scalping, and with 5x scalping:

  NO SCALPING
  Original seller gets: 1x price
  Customer pays: 1x price
  
  5x SCALPING
  Original seller gets: 1x price
  Reseller gets: 4x price
  Customer pays: 5x price
This is simple leeching. Customers pay 5x the price they could have, the seller gets still just the original amount of money. I think the situation is strictly worse than without scalping.

There are other arguments for and against to be made, but I think this one is enough to see why many people - myself included - find this practice distasteful and antisocial.

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