So I walked into a GameStop just to kill time and I spoke to a Nintendo rep there and I asked her a few questions. Most of which we might have already known, but I thought I'd post here anyway for the GAFfers that have been living under a rock until now.
- The westcoast port strike DIRECTLY affected Nintendo shipments for amiibo definitely. She said there are STILL January and February worth of amiibos on the shipping crates that have yet to be unloaded. The amiibos we DID get (like the previous wave of King Dedede, Sonic, etc.)..had to be delivered by air which cost them lots of money, which explains the shortage of certain characters. They of course don't plan on keeping that up.
- There will be a restock on older waves of amiibos, especially for rare characters like Wii Fit Trainer, etc. She explained they only made so many cause Nintendo thought the demand wouldnt be there due to the franchises for some of the characters being obscure, but she acknowledged they received TONS of emails from people that can't find/are looking for these characters...and the are trying to do what they can to get them out there but due to the port strike, a lot of those characters are still on the ships..in which cause she said to keep checking store for some of the older characters to appear.
- Wave 4 or 5 (whichever one it is I dunno) that has Ness and Charizard, etc, are having their release dates and preorders held at due to the port strike as WELL because Nintendo wants to make sure the situation with the strike will not affect shipments again and so they can gauge the market for demand, which will determine how many to produce. She said once most the cargo gets offloaded and everything is fine with everything and the market and they talk to retailers about stock, they'll announce.
- The Majora's Mask n3DSXL is absolutely gone. It truly WAS a limited edition release and there are NO stock anywhere in ANY warehouse and there are NO plans to restock whatsoever. Funny thing is she said retailers were informed about 6 months before its release and ordered accordingly. Chalk the scarcity to the retailers..cause they ordered how much they "felt" they were gonna need.
- She didn't know anything about a release date or Nintendo Direct for the remaining MK8 or Mewtwo DLC. The Directs are kind of random and she doesn't really get any sort of heads up but she said if Nintendo wants to show gameplay of something then the Directs are the only way they'll do it.
As stated before...some or even most of this info might've been known already but i thought I'd inform everyone anyway.
- The westcoast port strike DIRECTLY affected Nintendo shipments for amiibo definitely. She said there are STILL January and February worth of amiibos on the shipping crates that have yet to be unloaded. The amiibos we DID get (like the previous wave of King Dedede, Sonic, etc.)..had to be delivered by air which cost them lots of money, which explains the shortage of certain characters. They of course don't plan on keeping that up.
- There will be a restock on older waves of amiibos, especially for rare characters like Wii Fit Trainer, etc. She explained they only made so many cause Nintendo thought the demand wouldnt be there due to the franchises for some of the characters being obscure, but she acknowledged they received TONS of emails from people that can't find/are looking for these characters...and the are trying to do what they can to get them out there but due to the port strike, a lot of those characters are still on the ships..in which cause she said to keep checking store for some of the older characters to appear.
- Wave 4 or 5 (whichever one it is I dunno) that has Ness and Charizard, etc, are having their release dates and preorders held at due to the port strike as WELL because Nintendo wants to make sure the situation with the strike will not affect shipments again and so they can gauge the market for demand, which will determine how many to produce. She said once most the cargo gets offloaded and everything is fine with everything and the market and they talk to retailers about stock, they'll announce.
- The Majora's Mask n3DSXL is absolutely gone. It truly WAS a limited edition release and there are NO stock anywhere in ANY warehouse and there are NO plans to restock whatsoever. Funny thing is she said retailers were informed about 6 months before its release and ordered accordingly. Chalk the scarcity to the retailers..cause they ordered how much they "felt" they were gonna need.
- She didn't know anything about a release date or Nintendo Direct for the remaining MK8 or Mewtwo DLC. The Directs are kind of random and she doesn't really get any sort of heads up but she said if Nintendo wants to show gameplay of something then the Directs are the only way they'll do it.
As stated before...some or even most of this info might've been known already but i thought I'd inform everyone anyway.
