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+--- Thread: Nintendo has cancelled the NES Classic (/showthread.php?tid=7037)
Nintendo has cancelled the NES Classic - Dark Jaguar - 15th April 2017
I've heard, and made, the arguments. Nintendo doesn't want it cannibalizing virtual console sales. Nintendo might not have wanted to renegotiate the licenses for third party games. Nintendo never intended it to be a long lasting product. Nintendo didn't want to take attention away from the Switch. Nintendo knew it had been hacked and didn't want to support piracy. Nintendo wanted the factories making it to focus on Switch parts.
I'm just not sure those hold water. This device is basically something Nintendo could have left "on autopilot" and just steadily raked in profit.
As far as virtual console sales and threatening Switch sales, this device was aimed at very different people than the Switch was. I bought one for my niece, not for myself. I'm the sort that already owns every game on this thing anyway. Even gamers who don't have some big retro collection have other ways to get those classic games without Nintendo's blessing. Nintendo has a problem dealing with it's VC library anyway. They trickle those games out and force their loyal customers to buy the same thing over and over again if they actually want to use them on the newest hardware. (For my part, I'm fine playing those games on the oldest hardware and generally only buy VC games that never had a US release or are so ridiculously rare that the prices are beyond what I think is reasonable.) If Nintendo did better with that, the issue of "cannabalized" sales would vanish, and the NES classic would end up being more like a profitable double dip for Nintendo.
I can't speak for the companies Nintendo holds licenses with for those third party games, but they already have a solid license for those games on the virtual console. It seems to me that unless one of those companies raises a stink over renegotiating the terms (if anyone, it'd be Konami), Nintendo could just stamp their approval on renewing those licenses right up until the point the NES Classic stopped being profitable.
I really don't think the NES Classic being hacked would have influenced Nintendo one bit. The NES Classic is not an "active" platform. Nintendo isn't selling games for it. Third party companies aren't selling games for it. This isn't like when the PSP was cracked open and developers worried sales of any games they developed for it would be eaten up by pirates. Nothing is threatened by someone jamming a bunch of NES ROMs on this thing. It hardly "encourages" piracy either. The sorts of people with the know-how to hack the thing are the same sorts of people who have PCs and probably already have a bunch of emulators far beyond the NES and a vast library of ROMs for them. Heck, I've got ROMs of all the games I own for those older consoles, just for the sake of convenience. Many MANY people have pointed out how easy it is to configure a Raspberry Pi into an even more effective "Classic" console. All of those things are still there whether Nintendo makes their Classic or not, so what difference does it make if the thing was hacked?
Regarding factories focusing on other parts, I really don't think the parts used in the NES classic are easily translatable to the Switch. Different assembly lines, different parts, so I really don't think this would speed up Switch production any more than cancelling Amiibos would.
This brings us to the last point, and Nintendo's official line on the matter. They never intended for it to be a long term product, just a short term little side item. To that, I've only got this to say. So what? Who cares what your intentions were? The thing took off like crazy, almost as crazy as shutting off the assembly lines and saying "eh, no thank you" to all that money you should be printing from this thing. This is really the BEST time for them to cash in on it. Nintendo is still well known and 80's nostalgia is at it's peak. 80's nostalgia is only going to go down from here out, as later decades start to fill that niche more and more. You know, both Atari and Sega have no issues just leaving the companies making their retro systems for all eternity. This really seems like a no-brainer to me, but maybe I'm missing something.
Nintendo has cancelled the NES Classic - A Black Falcon - 17th April 2017
Hmm, what do I think of this? It doesn't bother me much, really. I mean, yes, Nintendo's decision here is very odd. I still have never seen a NES Classic for sale in a store, and now I don't know if I ever will, at least not new. But... it's just a standalone built-in-games system, it's not something actually important like a real console is. I have never bought these built-in-games-only systems, because I really dislike being limited to only a fraction of a systems' library with no, or no legal, way to play other games on the thing, and i don't think I'd buy a NES Classic even if I did buy it in a store. It is kind of neat looking, but not enough so to make me want one.
Apart from that though, while it is crazy to stop making these without ever actually producing enough to come even remotely close to meeting demand, Nintendo seems to have decided that they'd rather not make more money I guess... either that or they think that if they shipped a lot more they would end up sitting on shelves and not selling, once demand was met; it's possible. None of these stand-alone retro systems have ever been lasting sellers, each one sells for a bit and then is replaced with the next model the next year. This one, because it's from Nintendo, is just a much bigger deal than the usual AtGames stuff and the like.
As for the theory that they discontinued it because of that it has been completely hacked open, that does sound like a Nintendo-like thing to do, doesn't it... even if they aren't selling games for it, and in the past Nintendo's efforts to block homebrew on past consoles have always been cracked eventually, they can't even try to fix this, at least on the systems out there, and selling something which is easy to play the whole NES library on with no way for them to issue firmware that tries to patch that out or something? Sure, I'd probably agree that Nintendo's sales would not be impacted at all by that, but they have always been somewhat obsessive about hating emulation so I would not be surprised at all if that did play a role in their discontinuing the thing, whether or not they admit it.
Additionally, even if people wanted the things, is there really a lot of profit in a pretty cheap item which you can't then sell people more software for? It helped get Nintendo positive attention last Christmas at a time they needed it, but if there is ANY kind of supply-line either/or between the Switch and NES Classic, or even 3DS and NES Classic, it's obvious which should get the focus. Who knows on this point though.
Also... as I said earlier, the Atari and Sega clone systems release new models regularly, they do not keep selling the same one. It wouldn't be surprising if we eventually see a NES Classic 2, or a SNES Classic, or something along those lines; Nintendo of Japan's statement even said something that you could take as implying that there may be future models. But if they don't do that and just focus on the Switch, since it's a massive hit, that wouldn't surprise me at all either.
Nintendo has cancelled the NES Classic - A Black Falcon - 19th April 2017
So, the new rumor is that there will be an SNES Mini this Christmas. We'll see...
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-04-19-sources-nintendo-to-launch-snes-mini-this-year
Nintendo has cancelled the NES Classic - Dark Jaguar - 19th April 2017
Indeed, but the thing is these things don't need to be mutually exclusive. Heck, they don't even need to be "exclusive" in any sense. The SNES mini will very likely use the same cell phone processor the NES Classic did, and so porting that emulator and all it's games over would be no problem at all for Nintendo.