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Jimquisition: Nintendo - A Shit Distributor And Fuckheaded Toymaker (Nov. 28, 2016)
- Thread starter L~A
- Start date
Hierophant
Banned
he doesn't mince words huh
Baron von Loathsome
Member
You shit talkin' Balloon Fight?
Not going to watch but people need to let go of the manufactured scarcity myth.
No one is doing this on purpose in 2016, there are a number of other complex factors that affect supply and demand. Failure to meet demand costs money and the 'free marketing' it gets is not worth loss of sales.
No one is doing this on purpose in 2016, there are a number of other complex factors that affect supply and demand. Failure to meet demand costs money and the 'free marketing' it gets is not worth loss of sales.
Empyrean Heaven
Member
Agreed. The New 3DS Black Friday edition is the latest fuckery. I am scared as fuck about the Switch launch.
It's not a myth when there are practically no pre-orders, the exact thing that could help a company get a grip on the demand well in time to organise the process in the best way.
Which brings me to the point that the pre-orders for Switch will open at best roughly two months before release which gives very little time to balance things in case of estimated scarcity.
Really starting to feel that way. You don't get Wii-like buzz by shipping a ton of consoles at launch...
Living the Dream
Member
Y'all gotta read that interview with Itagaki. Haven't watched this Jim video yet, but am curious if he mentions that interview. Itagaki explains that the scarcity exists so the people at NOA get bonuses when things sell out.
hooijdonk17
Member
Unlike Mini NES not many fucks will be given.
axisofweevils
Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
I do agree with this. I've lost count of the number of times Nintendo uses a Direct to promote a Limited Edition, causing fans to frantically F5, then it turns into, "Oh, you weren't online on Amazon on Wednesday 10:37pm-10:47pm with a credit card in hand. Too bad. You can now get it from ebay at 5x the price."
Nintendo seems to disagree with you. Several times.
Might not be manufactured scarcity, but it is still strange to see Nintendo making costly, weekly supply deliveries to retail channels. Also not allowing pre-orders in NA seems strange.
And even if it is not manufactured, it's still a bad showing for not realizing the amount of demand. Only reason I can see for the scarcity is Nintendo under evaluating demand and desperately wanting to have it out before the holidays. If this released March next year (obviously not going to happen, because it would (be) undermine the Switch) it would still have sold bonkers.
NinjaCoachZ
Member
There was really no excuse for not doing preorders on this thing.
Jim Sterling
Member
Oh c'mon, Nintendo knew this would sale well. They just had to look around social medias to see people were excited as hell for the thing.
N° 2048
Member
How does everyone still not get this? Here, let me break it down for you.
Look at amiibo. First group of amiibo come out, Nintendo has it's initial shipment. It underestimates demand, and people get pissed. Bad.
So, Nintendo decides to try to fix the issue with Animal Crossing amiibo. Well, Nintendo overestimates demand. They litter store shelves for months and can't be sold for even $5 or less. This is WORSE. Stores get annoyed they are stuck with extra merchandise they can't sell. This costs Nintendo a lot of money and relationships.
Fast forward to NES classic. Does Nintendo over produce it and risk a repeat, or under produce it and if demand is high, do a second shipment? The answer is pretty clear. Watching people think it's some sort of manipulative scheme is hilarious...It's cost. Nothing else. If you over produce and misread it, you're left with a lot of leftover supply.
I've seen it time and time again with more products I can't mention. But that's how it works.
Look at amiibo. First group of amiibo come out, Nintendo has it's initial shipment. It underestimates demand, and people get pissed. Bad.
So, Nintendo decides to try to fix the issue with Animal Crossing amiibo. Well, Nintendo overestimates demand. They litter store shelves for months and can't be sold for even $5 or less. This is WORSE. Stores get annoyed they are stuck with extra merchandise they can't sell. This costs Nintendo a lot of money and relationships.
Fast forward to NES classic. Does Nintendo over produce it and risk a repeat, or under produce it and if demand is high, do a second shipment? The answer is pretty clear. Watching people think it's some sort of manipulative scheme is hilarious...It's cost. Nothing else. If you over produce and misread it, you're left with a lot of leftover supply.
I've seen it time and time again with more products I can't mention. But that's how it works.
Agreed. Still, if Nintendo keeps having these problems they need to figure out how to better estimate demand or stop being so stingy in their estimates of how many they can sell. If it is a repeat problem, there is something wrong with what they are doing and they should fix it. As you said, failure to meet demand costs money and loses sales and they are not operating at best ability when they keep doing it over and over. Plus they are pissing fans off and making some think it is done on purpose with how often it happens.
Manufactured scarcity is a dumb conspiracy theory that doesn't hold up to any sort of logic. Nintendo wants to make money. They are also a very conservative company. A bunch of posts on a video game forum does not mean a well known high demand. Pre-order numbers and whatever other formulaic projections they use are based on real numbers. If you think Nintendo does this shit to be cool and prefers resellers to be making high margins and their fans to be left in the cold than to have just been able to meet a high demand and make everyone happy including themselves, then you need to take a step back and re evaluate your life. Nintendo is already known for being highly conservative im not sure how deep in saltiness you have to be to think it's all about you and Nintendo likes to fuck with people for "sold out" brownie points. It's freaking Nintendo. They hold back for everything. People want them to treat everything like it's going to be a massive hit but that totally contradicts the company's conservative history and character...
Vampirolol
Member
I always like the conspiracy theories behind this.
There is a very easy way to estimate the demand at launch. By doing pre-orders. It's not rocket science.
J_ToSaveTheDay
Member
People who missed out on $99 3DS will know how this feels, too.
I know the sting from early Amiibo craze, too -- I was working at GameStop at the time. I remember when the second wave of characters were supposed to go live for pre-order, I had a literal line of customers at the store waiting for the pre-orders to unlock. Demand was so high that GameStop's systems went down for a few hours that afternoon, and I managed to pre-order a grand total of about 5 individual Amiibo figures by constantly brute forcing the system until it just worked. And that was only across two customers. I had to tell like 9 other people waiting in line for over 2 hours that there would be no luck that day, and many of them were verbally abusive at me.
I don't work at GameStop anymore, but fuck you Nintendo.
I know the sting from early Amiibo craze, too -- I was working at GameStop at the time. I remember when the second wave of characters were supposed to go live for pre-order, I had a literal line of customers at the store waiting for the pre-orders to unlock. Demand was so high that GameStop's systems went down for a few hours that afternoon, and I managed to pre-order a grand total of about 5 individual Amiibo figures by constantly brute forcing the system until it just worked. And that was only across two customers. I had to tell like 9 other people waiting in line for over 2 hours that there would be no luck that day, and many of them were verbally abusive at me.
I don't work at GameStop anymore, but fuck you Nintendo.
Tizoc
Member
Inwas alays under the impression here mngaf that preordering is a no-no, but that is in relation to games
Consoles are a dfferent matter then?
N° 2048
Member
What pre-orders? The NES Classic did not have pre orders in Canada.
Nintendo knows exactly what they are doing...
You are crazy if you think artificial demand is a myth. It exists, it's always existed, and this is a blatantly obvious case of it.
The NES mini selling out instantly makes it a "must have" toy for Christmas. You bet your ass moms are going to line up outside wal mart they say they get a new shipment in order to get the hottest toy of the holiday for little jimmy. Wouldn't have been the case if it was just in stock like normal.
There was also a big buzz around Bayonetta 2 on the Wii U since its announcement. And you know what happened to its sales.
I think their big mistake was to not let pre-orders happen for the NES Mini just to get a true gauge of the demand.
LordRaptor
Member
This.
Also - despite the "well known demand" - Jim did a video on what a waste of money the NES classic was, how NES games aren't worth the price and that you should just download the ROMs when it was announced.
I keep going back and forth on this.
D: They don't want to be burned by unsold inventory
A: Then why not use pre-orders?
D: Plug-n-play doesn't have good historic data regarding pre-order percent representation
A: Then still allow pre-orders and ship however many are ordered
D: Their manufacturing resources are probably in high gear on switch thus the slow rollout
et cetera et cetera
D: They don't want to be burned by unsold inventory
A: Then why not use pre-orders?
D: Plug-n-play doesn't have good historic data regarding pre-order percent representation
A: Then still allow pre-orders and ship however many are ordered
D: Their manufacturing resources are probably in high gear on switch thus the slow rollout
et cetera et cetera
So you want them to manufacture a lot of a product based on high hopes? It's Nintendo. They are conservative.
Current gaming culture demonizes pre-orders. I have a feeling they do not represent demand accurately any longer.
Skittzo0413
Member
I do agree that it's very unlikely that they intentionally create manufactured scarcity, but as others have pointed out- a lot of these problems can be solved by opening up pre-orders very early to gauge actual demand.
It's likely a combination of very conservative manufacturing/shipping and ignorance of consumer demand, especially on social media. I think it's more an indication of how Nintendo is very conservatively run, where NCL might not understand or care what's been seen on social media in NA. But early pre-orders would solve a lot of these problems.
Proven huh? Where's that proof you've seen? You understand that things selling out + product being successful does not = they did it on purpose, right?
hooijdonk17
Member
Joke post? How much could B2 sell on a system that did not sell to the point retailer could as well offer free blowjobs to each customer? How are the two situations even slightly relevant?
Admiral Woofington
Member
I think nobody would disagree that fuck Nintendo on this particular regard
Pre-ordering where you have to make an initial payment... Bad. Pre-ordering because you want said thing on release before reviews... Bad.
Pre-ordering to claim yours, and have reviews/in depth previews go up before release... Good. Nintendo's pre-release media coverage was quite good.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
They did in the UK, and it took a while for them to close off. So I'm not surprised they underestimated demand in the UK at least.