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In light of Nintendo's recent announcement that they are discontinuing the NES Classic Mini, despite unfulfilled demand, and given Nintendo's long history of making baffling decisions, this thread is to ask: what is Nintendo's craziest decision? Which one can't be explained by the logic the rest of the world uses?
Let's not get hung up on the NES Classic. Nintendo hasn't, and presumably won't, say what their reasoning was, but at least there are some reasonable guesses. Read all about them in the thread about the announcement.
Another popular choice would probably be their decision to use cartridges in the Nintendo 64. But again, we can see a trail of causality there: they burned bridges with Sony and Phillips, who would have been the manufacturer of the CD drive at the time. It wasn't an inexplicable decision, even if it was a costly one for them.
Here's my favorite: Nintendo's bizarre reluctance to support component cables.
So Nintendo makes the Gamecube support 480p video via component, and every Gamecube game they make during its life, minus one, supports that standard (many 3rd party games did not support 480p). But they only sell the component cable online, and in limited quantities.
A couple years later, they remove the connection port for the cable from newly manufactured Gamecubes, citing that "less that 5% of owners are using component cables".
A self-fulfilling prophecy!
An interesting postscript to that story: Nintendo originally announced that Wii component cables would only be sold online. Read all about the confusion and GAF members' attempts to secure one, when Nintendo first put them up for sale, in this thread.
I was one of those Gaffers, and I got one. So did my friend, who I alerted to the situation. He paid for faster shipping. I didn't. And, indeed, you can see my posts in the thread wondering why his showed up as shipped before mine did. I didn't know at the time that he chose faster shipping.
But, as it turns out, they arrived the same day; his had actually been sent the day after mine. So he called Nintendo, wondering why he paid more money. Their answer is priceless. They told him - I kid you not - "We send out the slower ones first, because they take longer to get there. We send the overnight ones the next day. They don't take as long to get there, so everyone will get their orders sooner."
That's right, folks: Nintendo seems to think people pay for faster shipping because they want a faster transit time, not an earlier arrival.
Let's not get hung up on the NES Classic. Nintendo hasn't, and presumably won't, say what their reasoning was, but at least there are some reasonable guesses. Read all about them in the thread about the announcement.
Another popular choice would probably be their decision to use cartridges in the Nintendo 64. But again, we can see a trail of causality there: they burned bridges with Sony and Phillips, who would have been the manufacturer of the CD drive at the time. It wasn't an inexplicable decision, even if it was a costly one for them.
Here's my favorite: Nintendo's bizarre reluctance to support component cables.
So Nintendo makes the Gamecube support 480p video via component, and every Gamecube game they make during its life, minus one, supports that standard (many 3rd party games did not support 480p). But they only sell the component cable online, and in limited quantities.
A couple years later, they remove the connection port for the cable from newly manufactured Gamecubes, citing that "less that 5% of owners are using component cables".
A self-fulfilling prophecy!
An interesting postscript to that story: Nintendo originally announced that Wii component cables would only be sold online. Read all about the confusion and GAF members' attempts to secure one, when Nintendo first put them up for sale, in this thread.
I was one of those Gaffers, and I got one. So did my friend, who I alerted to the situation. He paid for faster shipping. I didn't. And, indeed, you can see my posts in the thread wondering why his showed up as shipped before mine did. I didn't know at the time that he chose faster shipping.
But, as it turns out, they arrived the same day; his had actually been sent the day after mine. So he called Nintendo, wondering why he paid more money. Their answer is priceless. They told him - I kid you not - "We send out the slower ones first, because they take longer to get there. We send the overnight ones the next day. They don't take as long to get there, so everyone will get their orders sooner."
That's right, folks: Nintendo seems to think people pay for faster shipping because they want a faster transit time, not an earlier arrival.
