wasn't that only in the very early months? there are no big western AAA games coming to it as far as I know so I don't expect it to hold it up. it doesn't have memes like wii fit and an unbeatable price tag either
i think they're also super conservative + unable to predict the market. "oh, we don't know how many people would be interested in a nes classic, so we'll only make a few"
yeah the "not enough units" thing is pretty strange
it sort of made sense with amiibo, artificial scarcity sort of has its uses, but doing it for consoles is just bizarre
i honestly think they're not doing it on purpose and never have. they just don't want extra stock that they won't sell ... they were probably burned by the n64 and gamecube and haven't got their confidence back
my gaming partner and I argue about this. I say there's no way in hell ninty increases demand for their products by purposely not making enough. There is NO benefit for them if they do that. Absolutely none. The only people who benefit from that are scalpers. That's all.
I'm pretty sure economic theory shows that it doesn't work
the only reason I think it might make some sense for things like amiibo is that it generates you extra publicity, particularly in a market like gaming where there are a thousand desperate, shit news sites that are champing at the bit to print literally anything
ok but what good is that publicity to nintendo? So it raises demand and has people talking. So what? They don't make any money from that. The only thing good about demand is the profit you reap when you meet that demand. They're not meeting it, therefore no profit.