Another Nintendo Device, More Consumer Anxiety

Nintendo's launched their first miniaturized classic console in late 2016 with appallingly limited supply. Those who weren't lucky enough to snatch one, were forced to either haplessly pay a premium of up to three or four times the retail price to scalpers or give up on getting one entirely. Last Friday, Nintendo released their second classic console to the same debacle.

This isn’t the first or second time Nintendo has created a problem for consumers. Within the same fiscal period alone, Nintendo has been faced with supply concerns for all three of their launched devices, including both classic systems and their flagship console, the Switch. This is in spite of the waning production of their handheld system the Nintendo 3DS. In recent years, it would also include their amiibo toy line, any collector edition item and, most notoriously, with the Wii home console. The Wii U however, their previous home console, didn’t feature the same consumer problem due to its failure to captivate the market amongst the competition.

On one hand, you can conspire that the company is creating artificial demand to gain publicity and promote their products by restricting supply. This however isn’t realistically beneficial to the company since scalpers typically are the ones reaping the inflated profit. They are usually quickest to the draw once a product is released into the market, and then they usually place it on eBay to a sadistic bidding war.

This really is an annoyance to fans of the company and potential consumers in general. The situation can induce panic, anxiety, disappointment and even regret. It is especially problematic to consumers not within the company’s main regional operations (Japan, America & Europe). In my own experience living in the Caribbean, my end result thus far is disappointment. I usually resort to online retailers, mainly being Amazon, and they have been sold out months in advance, and currently stating that they don’t know if or when the product will be restocked.