Nintendo returns NES Classic Mini on June 29, 2018
Update: Nintendo announced via Twitter that the NES Classic Mini will be available again from June 29 this year. That should put an end to the scarcity around the retro product, although it is not yet known how many copies Nintendo will produce. However, if we look at the production of the SNES Classic Mini then that should, in any case, be enough to supply the hardcore fans. Both retro consoles should be available until the end of this year, so you still have at least half a year to find one.
Nintendo has not yet said how many NES Classics will come back and we do not know for sure whether it will happen in Europe, but just assume that they will show up again in the summer of 2018. Nice, except for the people who have paid far too much for an NES Classic Mini in the assumption that they had a collector’s item.
Nintendo seems to have at least learned something from chemistry that both the NES and the SNES Classics have caused in shops and online shops. The promise, in advance, of more than enough SNES Mini consoles ,should ensure that people know they can just wait for the next batch and do not have to go to eBay. Making your products available to people who want to buy them is perhaps more important than trying to create the touch of exclusivity.
That does not change the fact that this whole strategy does, not, but still, with an extra sauce of ambiguity not fun for consumers and not fun for retailers. Are you going to get such a thing or not? If Nintendo keeps a word, the answer is yes, so that is certainly good news for the people who would like to have such a Mini.